


And The Sky Is Limitless

by Laliandra



Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Steampunk, M/M, Steampunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-28
Updated: 2011-06-28
Packaged: 2017-10-20 19:56:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 52,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/216557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laliandra/pseuds/Laliandra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Captain Kristopher Allen loves his ship but needs a hobby and Prince Adam is unbalancing. Featuring sky pirates, political machinations, unexpected weaponry and Much Ado About Cogs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And The Sky Is Limitless

**Author's Note:**

> For all of the thanks and credit and general overwhelmed gratitude see [the livejournal Master Post](http://laliandra.livejournal.com/33083.html)

&&&&&

  
They finally find the Prince after three hours of searching. He’s leaning on a rail overlooking the harbour, lit only by the lights of the ships below. The shadows make him look like a pen and ink drawing, Kris thinks, all sharp lines and contrasts, dark hair and pale skin, black jacket with buttons shining white. He spots the glint of an Upgrade fitted over the right arm, and he knows he’s got his man.

“How can I help you?” the Prince asks, drawing himself up to a fairly impressive height.

“Captain Allen, of the Airship Conway,” Kris says, then curses at himself and quickly adds, “Sire.”

The Prince’s eyes widen, incredulous and pleased. “They've finally sent me an airship? I've been telling them for months that we could wrap this campaign up with just one airship.” He has the look of a man whose wishes have all come true at once, and Kris feels like the kind of messenger who’s going to be drawn and quartered, never mind shot.

“Um… no… I…” Kris has to take a deep breath, but crashes on with his prepared speech anyway, “I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but the Idol…your father… he passed away.”

The Prince looks at him with an expression caught midway between annoyance and confusion.

“So, you’ve flown half away across the globe to tell me? I knew my father was sick.”

“To bring you back. Your presence is required at home immediately.” Kris sees the Prince set his jaw stubbornly.

“We’re in the middle of a military campaign and I’m the Commander. I’m needed here. I’m sure the Court can cope for a little longer. I need an airship for combat, not to act as my coach, _dammit_ ,” the Prince snaps, and Kris can hear months of frustration in that one word.

“The situation in the kingdom is, um, somewhat precarious. Sire. Your succession is being challenged.”

“Gokey,” the Prince says instantly. Kris isn’t surprised. There’s never been much love lost between the two cousins.

“He’s trying to set himself up as the next Idol. He thinks he can usurp you if he moves fast enough and,” Kris can’t stop his hands curling into fists, “he’s taken Allie. Um. I mean, the Princess Allison.”

The Prince goes white at that. “Taken?” he asks, his voice more unsteady now than when he was discussing his father’s death.

“The official line is that she’s gone on a visit to the Outer Isles, but that’s obviously just a line. It makes no sense and besides, she’d choose me to fly her there, I know it. She’s been pestering me to take her up in the Conway for months now.”

The Prince’s expression goes suddenly quizzical and he steps forward, peering at Kris in the dim light.

“Oh!” he says and his smile blazes out. “You’re Captain Kristopher. Allie writes about you all the time. You’re the one who taught her to fire an Acoustic. I heard Minister Cowell pitched a fit at that. She was so excited though, I…”

Kris hears Michael coming up behind him and watches all the expression, the life that had burst onto Prince Adam’s face as he talked about Allie, vanish as if someone had closed all the valves. In its place is a calm mask of a smile, flat and practiced. The smile of someone born at Court.

“How soon can we get back?” the Prince asks. Kris feels relief like a punch to the gut. Adam had defied The Idol to stay with the troops here; there had been no guarantee he would agree to come back. The Minister had used the phrase “By any means necessary,” his voice as ominous as the rattle of pipes before an engine blowout.

“Michael, go tell the crew to prepare for immediate departure. Sire, we’re the fastest ship in the fleet. We can have you back in a week,” Kris tells him, not a little proud.

“Only a week? It took me nearly three to get here. The Conway must really be something.”

The smile returns, just for a second, and Kris remembers Allie telling him how much her brother loves to fly. He’d been dreading this mission, with all the stupid diplomacy and extra danger for his crew, but now all he can see is an enthusiastic smile slid sideways at him, covert and pleased. It might not be so bad.

This feeling lasts right up until the moment they reach the Conway and the Prince looks at Kris’s ship, his darling girl, and says, “ _That’s_ the pride of the Fleet?”

Kris glares at him, then remembers who exactly this is and tries to make his face devoid of emotion. He’s really not as good at it as Prince Adam, who raises his eyebrows coolly. Kris doesn’t trust himself not to say something insubordinate, so he motions the Prince up the gangplank in silence.

Katy is standing at the top, wind whipping at her skirt, the start of a real squall by the looks of things.

“Is that you, Kit?” she calls, and she must have been worrying, to use his nickname from childhood.

“Aye, Kat,” he yells back. Katy opens the gate onto the ship and gives Kris a brief, fierce hug.

“You did disappear in a war zone,” she tells him sternly when he cocks his head at her in surprise.

The Prince is looking round like he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing; the deck is still covered in piles of coal and spare parts from their latest on-the-job repair.

“This is Katherine, the co-owner of the Conway. So be nice about our girl,” he tells Prince Adam.

Katy gives him a pointed look and Kris feels stupid beyond measure. He’s never been much good in Court, not sure enough of himself to cope with it all, and now he has to remember all these rules, on his own damn ship.

“I mean, Prince Adam, may I present Miss Katherine O’ Connell?”

The Prince bows low, an easy, graceful movement, and Katy is instantly charmed. Kris can tell from the way she inclines her head, a little shy, as she curtsies back.

“My condolences about your father, for what they’re worth, sire,” Katy says, the title easy on her lips.

The Prince smiles at her, a smile with purpose that makes her sparkle back at him, before she dashes off to investigate the noise coming from the engine room. Kris waits for a moment, hears, “Meg, not again,” and relaxes.

“Meg’s a brilliant engineer but a little erratic,” he tells Prince Adam, who looks amused. “Sometimes the engine complains.”

“Is it a Newcomen?” the Prince asks, hand stretching out towards a stack of spare parts. “I thought I saw some difference cogs?”

“You know what a difference cog looks like?” Kris picks one up and twirls it through his fingers, a tick he’d really hoped he’d grown out of.

“Oh yes,” Prince Adam says and then steals the cog, his fingers a fleeting, warm presence on Kris’s. “I tried to build a Newcomen when I was 12. The difference cogs were the hardest part to try and recreate. In the end Allie and I snuck some out of the Upgrade Workshop.”

Kris can just imagine them, running wild through the corridors of the Mansion, too brilliant to be contained, and he can’t help grinning. Prince Adam returns the grin and Kris feels momentarily blindsided.

“What happened with your engine?” he asks, watching the Prince’s hand close round the cog so that it almost looks part of the Upgrade that extends down to his wrist, fitted neatly over his arm, starkly, mechanically beautiful.

“It blew up,” the Prince says absently. “The Idol was most displeased, gave me a talk on Conduct Unbecoming a Prince. First of many.” He seems to remember where he is and shifts, looking as near to uncomfortable as Kris thinks he ever could.

“This coat isn’t much good in the rain.” The Prince indicates his uniform. “Could we possibly get into the dry?”

Kris is used to standing in storms, dry in his leather, but he realises that the Prince, hair now dripping into his eyes, is probably less so. His fingers had been warm, though.

“Sorry, sire, I’ll show you where you’re staying,” Kris says, remembering to pick up the case that they had collected from Prince Adam’s lodgings. It’s remarkably heavy, but Kris has been working on a ship most of his life and adjusts easily, winding his way through the corridors until they reach his cabin.

“We thought we’d put you in here with me,” Kris tells Prince Adam, opening the door with his hip. “It’s the biggest room, and suitably out of the way. You shouldn’t be able to smell the engines from here or anything and Matt and I shifted the desk so that we could rig you up a bunk by the window.”

“What about Katherine?” asks the Prince, tilting his head and fixing Kris with a bird-like stare of inquiry, eyes sharp and bright. It reminds Kris so much of Allie that he wants to punch something. That bastard Gokey, for a start.

“Well, her room isn’t as big, and besides, sire, I’m not sure it would be proper for you to share with her.”

“But aren’t you,” the Prince makes vague swirling motions in the air with his hand, “married or something?”

Kris is about to call him crazy, but he considers the hug and the nicknames and the whole ‘co-owner’ thing and he can see why it would seem like that to an outsider. It’s still rather funny, though, all things considered.

“No. She’s always been – I – we dreamed about having our own ship from when we were children, and she’s the best partner I could wish for. But it’s – we’re - nothing like that.”

“Ah,” the Prince says, voice low. He looks distracted, for just a second, then the cheery expression is back in full. “I’ve never slept in a bed that swings before. It’s like a better class of hammock, how interesting. Any tips? Bunk rules?”

“No undoing any knots of the bunk. No jumping on the bunk. No rough sex in the bunk,” Kris recites automatically. Then he realises exactly what he’s said. He reminds himself that he is the goddamn Captain of an Airship, not some burbling idiot, and manages to say, “My apologies, sire, I wasn’t thinking. I meant - the bunks are not the easiest or most stable kind of bed.”

The Prince’s face is impassive, but it looks only by serious force of will.

“That is to say, I only wish we had something more suitable for you, sire,” Kris finishes and avoids thinking about all the very many punishments there are for Treason Subset 5 (Improper language and or conduct directed at the Heir Apparent).

Prince Adam seems to be very carefully avoiding making eye contact, thumb tracing round the teeth of the cog still nestled in his palm.

“Well, I am only sorry to have inconvenienced you so,” says the Prince, matching Kris’s neutral tone so exactly that Kris suspects he’s being mocked. He puts the cog into a pocket and swings his case up onto the bunk.

Kris grins. “Er, sire? You’re inside an Airship. There’s no need to hoard difference cogs. There are probably about 20 of them in the wall next to your bed,” he says, and then adds another, “sire,” just in case. He thinks he sees Prince Adam’s mouth twitch.

“Don’t look so concerned, Captain Allen, I’m not going to make off with your spare parts.” Prince Adam leans back against the wall, one nonchalant sprawl, but Kris notices him press a hand against the wall to feel the hum of it, a smile threatening the edges of his mouth.

“It’s more noticeable as you get closer to the main linkages,” Kris tells him. “Sometimes I try and find the engine room with my eyes closed.” Katy always laughs at him when he trails his hand along the walls of the corridor, but he likes the way the Conway feels, alive under his fingertips.

The smile breaks, finally, and Prince Adam says, “I can see why Allie likes you, Captain Kristopher.”

“Kris is fine, sire. Allie only gets away with Captain Kristopher because she’s cute.”

“Well, then, Adam is fine,” the Prince says, without missing a beat. “Oh come on, don’t look so scandalised. You’ve been running about calling the Princess Select ‘Allie’, for heaven’s sake.”

“But Allie is… We… I met her at a function and she was so bored she fell asleep on my shoulder and drooled on me.” Kris grins at the memory. “And when she woke up she even didn't apologise, just kept whispering terrible jokes about all the dignitaries that went past us to try and make me laugh. She’s not exactly a very ‘Princess’ person.”

“She’s terrible at trying to be, believe me. But I’m not much better a Prince. Not regal enough by half,” says Prince Adam, made a liar by the way he leans forward, all effortless poise and precision.

“But what about protocol?” Kris asks weakly, not entirely sure why he feels he needs to make the point, but determined to at least try.

“It’s not something I’ve ever been particularly good with, and unless you’ve been faking the winces and the hastily tacked on ‘sire’s, neither are you, I suspect,” Prince Adam says with an easy smile.

“I’m hopeless at it,” Kris admits, “but you don’t have to change the rules for me. If you wish me to use your title, I both can and will.”

“What I wish,” Prince Adam says, eyes fixed on the wall and not on Kris, “is that we didn’t have to have this conversation at all. But since you are caught up in formalities, may I remind you that I am a military officer of equal rank to you and a Prince possibly without kingdom or position. Whereas you are most certainly Captain of this vessel. It would be improper of me to treat you as a subordinate, regardless of my wishes to make you wince less. If I had such wishes,” he adds, smile daring Kris to call him on his obvious reinterpretation of the rules.

Kris has a sudden realisation of what it must be like for the Majors when Kris uses that same smile while he explains – very politely – how the crew of the Conway have bent fleet regulations yet again. He feels like someone just turned his own gun against him.

But then he's never been one to back down from a dare.

“Well,” he says, feeling his expression turn slightly mischievous and not caring, “if your highness thinks it would be _improper_ otherwise…”

Prince Adam just does the waving thing again, as if he can dispel the last of Kris’s doubts with a gesture, and says, “Besides, we’re sharing a room now, I can’t have you calling me ‘sire’ all the time. I’d feel like I was sleeping at Court. I'd keep expecting Minister Murdoch to jump out from behind the bunk and start berating me for my attire.”

Kris has to smile at that. “Make yourself at home,” he says. “I have to go to supervise the casting off.”

The Prince - Adam - ’s face goes young and eager. “Can I come watch? Can I help?”

“No,” Kris says instantly. He feels bad as he sees the eagerness darken into uncertainty, but there’s no way around it.

“I’m sorry, but it’s far too dangerous to have civilians on deck. You can watch from the window. It’s brewing a gale out there and you could get hurt or impede my crew, ” Kris explains, but throws Prince Adam a smile as he leaves. Adam isn’t looking, he’s undoing the straps of his Upgrade, face intent on the tiny buckles and tongue tracing over his lips in concentration.

Kris hurries out onto deck, and the cool rain washes the heat out of his cheeks.

&&&

By the time Kris sees Adam again, they have flown through the night and through the storm. Kris loves the Conway like this, singing with the rhythm of residual raindrops dripping on metal, the morning sunlight catching the droplets and making her shine.

It’s a dangerous time, too, however. He tells Matt to summon the crew and set them to disassembling all the guns and checking them for water. There are some unhappy faces, so Kris stands on the steps to the front lookout and shouts, “Attention, everyone!” His crew all gather round; they know he hates to yell.

“I know this isn’t fun, but we can’t afford to let a single gear or linkage rust. The Conway is our girl, and she needs us to take care of her, just like she takes care of us.” Kris thinks of Prince Adam’s shocked face and smiles to himself. “She may not be much to look at, but you all know the truth. We chose every bolt and gear of her to make her the best thing the sky’s ever seen. Let’s do her justice.” There is a general straightening of shoulders and a chorus of "Yes, Captain," which still makes Kris heart-happy after two years.

“Thanks everyone," he says. "You can carry on now, Matt.”

Matt just shouts, “Okay people, you heard the Captain. Carry on.” He turns to Kris and says, “So, I see our royal visitor is making an appearance,” motioning over at the door out on to deck.

The Prince is there, watching Kris with his arms folded. Adam looks different in the daylight, the sharp lines of his face softened by the creases round his eyes, the freckles that scatter his cheeks, and the approving curve of his mouth.

Matt gives Kris a sideways look. “Are you all right? Is he a nuisance? An idiot? Are you allowed to say? What the hell is the protocol for this, anyway?”

The word ‘protocol’ makes Kris chuckle.

“I’ve been wondering the same kind of thing,” he explains to Matt. “And I’m going for - treat him like a Captain, I think.” Matt laughs as Kris qualifies quickly, “Though with a bit more respect than I usually get.” Kris has known Matt since they were both just recruited, a longstanding friendship build on mockery and prank wars.

“Aye, Captain Allen, sir,” Matt replies, face straight and salute perfect. Kris ignores him and nods at Adam to come join him on the steps. Matt gives Adam an ostentatious bow as he passes him to go assign tasks to their crew.

Adam says, “So, that’s you as Captain Allen. Very… masterful.”

“This,” Kris indicates the pair of them with his hand, “could be problematic if I’m never sure whether you’re being serious or not.”

“For future reference, I was being completely serious,” Adam says. He looks worn but relaxed, leaning against the railing and watching the clouds tumble by.

“Cross your heart and hope to fly?” Kris asks, and then feels like an idiot when Adam turns to him with a confused look.

“It’s just something we used to say when I was a kid,” Kris explains, putting his hand to the back of his neck.

“Cross my heart and hope to fly,” Adam repeats solemnly, and then the weariness seeps back into his eyes. “I need you to tell me exactly what’s been happening. At home, I mean.”

“It all got really bad when your father got sick,” Kris starts. He tries to sneak a look at Adam, which doesn’t work because Adam is looking straight at him and rolls his eyes.

“Captain - Kris, let’s not pretend that the Idol was anything like a father to me. Tell me honestly what happened, don't sugar coat it. Or else I’m going in blind - no intel, no recon, no plan,” he says, sounding every inch the military commander.

“The Court was practically at a stand still for the week before. Not a single ship got an order to fly, no proclamations were made or Grievance Sessions held. It was creepy. Then, on the 23rd we were all called into the Hall, all the commanders from the forces and the Ministers and, well, everyone. And they said the Idol was dead. And then Gokey made a speech about how the Princess Allison was inconsolable and had decided to take a respite in the Outer Isles, and that he would be ‘co-ordinating proceedings until,’ no wait, ‘ _unless_ the Prince sees fit to return.’”

Kris remembers standing there, trying to catalogue reactions - the shocked, too-tight squeeze of Katy’s hand as she heard Allie’s name, the way Gokey’s eyes slid to the side. Everyone round him was either too stunned to talk or too stunned to stop, voicing their dissent or support with dangerous openness. There had been a small crowd of Ministers on the dais with Gokey, and they had looked particularly displeased.

Kris reports all this to Adam, who fixes Kris with an intent look. “And you?”

“And me?” Kris repeats, distracted momentarily by Anoop dropping something with a very distressing clang.

“What did you think was going on, then, in the Hall?” Adam asks. They both sigh in relief when Anoop yells, “Not broken!”

“Oh. I was just glad that we knew what was going on, finally, but then, when he said that about Allie… I knew he was lying, I _knew_. She wouldn’t have just left without saying anything and anyway, inconsolable? Not likely.”

Adam swears under his breath and says, “What happened then? Who gave you the orders to come for me?”

“Then we all went back to our ships to await further instruction. Minister Cowell sent for me and told me to take the Conway to get you, as quickly as possible. He seemed pissed off, though, to put it bluntly. I think he'd been made to say that by someone else.”

“Sounds like him,” Adam says with a commiserative expression. “Never happy unless he’s calling the shots. So we don’t know where we really stand with him, or who actually sent you here.”

“No,” Kris agrees with a frown. “This is why I hate politics.” He listens to the soothing, dependable sound of the Conway and watches Matt brandish a screwdriver at Anoop, who is now sitting on the deck with an array of parts before him. It’s peaceful, in its own mad, hectic way, and Kris can’t help smiling, just a little.

“So, do you think they’ve really sent Allie to the Outer Isles?” Adam asks, sounding almost apologetic at having to break the moment.

Kris considers this for moment. “Possibly, because then there would be witnesses to her being there. But I think Gokey would want to keep her close.”

“Where he can keep an eye on her. Or just get rid of her if needs be,” Adam says darkly. They stare at each other for one bleak minute until Adam attempts a smile and says, “Could be worse, she could have really had to go to the Outer Isles, and everyone knows you can actually die of boredom there. Or even worse, one of the Far South Isles.”

Kris says nothing, just stares fixedly. Adam winces, which makes a refreshing turn-about, and says, “Oh hell. Which one are you from, then?”

“Arkansay,” Kris says, and then lets it slide because the bleak look is still clouding the edges of Adam’s eyes. “Honestly, you’ve insulted my ship, my home, my Captaining… Anything else?”

It’s an obvious attempt at distraction, but Adam goes along with it. “You have horrible dress sense,” he says quickly. “I mean, apart from the leather coat. And you’re a horrible host; you didn’t wake me up whenever you left this morning. I don’t even know where to get any breakfast.”

“Well, then you are bad at being observant, because I didn’t come back to the cabin after we cast off,” Kris replies, and Adam looks him up and down and says, “You haven’t slept.”

“No time. Storm,” Kris says flatly, and suddenly he feels it, feels the tiredness settle in somewhere around bone level. There’s no time for that, though, because he should check on the guns now that the crew have started putting them back together, and he really should show Adam where everything is.

He takes Adam to the galley, where Katy is contemplating a bowl of porridge. She smiles blurrily at them. Kris sits next to her and she gives him a once over, then pushes her bowl towards him, saying, “He forgets to eat as well as sleep, sire,” to Adam.

Scott brings them over tea and more porridge, and Kris can see Adam is desperate to examine the Upgrade that covers his eyes. To Adam’s credit, he manages not to poke at it like he does everything else mechanical, restricting himself to staring as he thanks Scott politely.

“I’ll need the rotas after breakfast,” Kris tells Katy, before that gets lost in a fog of tiredness. “And Anoop needs the charts checking over; I told him you’d do that. Adam, get someone to show you around. You need to familiarise yourself with the ship layout as soon as possible.”

He freezes as he realises he’s given Adam orders as if he were one of his crew, but Adam just swipes a piece of bread from the counter and falls easily into conversation with Katy. Kris focuses on his porridge, working through the bowl mechanically, and doesn’t notice he’s been tuning out the conversation until he feels the weight of stares on him and sees Adam and Katy looking at him expectantly.

“Yes?” he hazards, and they both laugh.

“You should get some sleep, Captain Allen,” Adam says. “I can look after myself. You just make sure we don’t fall out of the sky or whatever it is that you do.”

Kris says, “Ironically, I have to work out when everyone else is going to get some sleep first,” but he feels a little better all the same.

&&&

It’s a long, long morning, and Kris has to push on through the tiredness until he reaches a strange glassy-eyed place of calm. At some point tea is deposited among the reams of paper on his desk and he drinks half of it in a gulp before looking up to see, not Katy or Scott, but Adam, blowing fastidiously on a small cup of his own.

It occurs to Kris that he should probably stop staring blankly at Adam. But it’s not his fault. It’s not every day that Princes bring him tea while he tries to wrangle political crises and shift rotas. He’s allowed to be a little taken aback.

“You’re welcome,” Adam says pointedly, and Kris realises that thinking about his good reasons for staring creepily at Adam is only making him, well, stare creepily at Adam even more.

Kris says, “Thank you,” taking another sip and pulling a slight face at the bitter aftertaste.

“You don’t have to drink it if you don’t like it.” Adam has an expression like a cat with wet fur, and Kris realises something else.

“You made this,” he says.

Adam nods. “Well, the water boiler looked so fascinating, and then Scott was showing me the system for tea and I made lots, so…tea?”

Kris takes another sip in silent apology, trying to hide the grimace, and Adam says, “Fine, I make horrible tea. But you still have horrible hair.”

“My hair was not on the list of things that were horrible,” Kris protests.

Adam makes an unrepentant ‘what can you do?’ gesture with his cup, avoiding disaster and spillages somehow with the smooth movement of his hand, then nods a goodbye and leaves.

The rest of the day passes in charts and maps and Anoop’s scrawled calculations about where they need to be when to catch the currents that will get them back to the Mansion in the promised week. The cliché about navigators' handwriting is, like all the best clichés, completely true, and Kris spends what seems like hours simply decoding all the notes. Various crew members bring him sandwiches, reports and updates on what His Highness has been up to, which mostly seems to involve obsessing over things in the engine room and letting Scott talk to him about food. The general tone is of slightly awed confusion, which Kris can’t blame them for in the slightest. Prince Adam is unbalancing.

During one particularly vague moment, Kris finds himself thinking that if he had known this was what being Captain of an airship involved, then maybe he wouldn’t have dreamed about it for so long, let it be the light that he’d guided his life by. He shakes his head at himself and tries to concentrate on the numbers in front of him, un-compelling as they are.

Then the door opens and Matt says, “I bring three very important things for you.”

Kris says, still focused on a getting this line right, “You know the rule about knocking, Matt, and one of those things had better be supper.”

“I do _slightly_ object to be called a thing.” Adam’s voice is amused and drawling, and Kris knows even before he looks up that Adam will be leaning on something with careless grace. Matt looks supremely unconcerned by Kris's tone. He brushes past Adam - who is, sure enough, supporting himself on the doorframe - to put plates down on the table.

Kris catches the rich smell of gravy, and it’s possible he lets out a moan, just a little one. Matt laughs and Adam gets that strange, fixed expression again, as if his brain is so busy trying to work out what the hell is going on that he’s had to leave his face on default setting, because there aren’t enough cogs to work both.

“I just really, really like stew,” Kris explains, and Adam seems to come to, joining Matt at the table.

“Well, I may have made a similar noise at the other thing I brought," Matt says with a grin, and Adam raises his eyebrows and murmurs, “Oh really? I didn’t know you felt that way.”

Matt leers at Adam. Kris wonders exactly when they became so friendly, anyway.

“So, Meg thinks she might have found a way to improve the turning angle,” Matt enthuses, and Adam sighs. “Honestly, do none of you people get enjoyment from normal things?”

“Says the man who spent half an hour looking at the power couplings,” Kris retorts easily. “Oh yes, I have my spies. I know all about you and your valve fetish.”

“I’m not ashamed, I admit it freely,” Adam says, sitting down and unrolling a schematic on the table.

Kris weighs each end down with a plate of stew and tries to figure out what Megan is suggesting they do to the main valve system to stop the wide right turn Matt is always complaining about. No one had ever wanted to hire Megan before she came to the Conway and somehow managed to make everything faster and better. Now Kris can’t imagine being without her—her easy affection, her ridiculous jokes, her absent-minded otherworldliness. And most of the other Captains hadn’t even noticed Matt…

Kris smiles and Matt says, “I know the Conway is essentially the love of your life, but that’s never a valve related smile.”

“Just thinking how great it is to be Captain,” Kris tells him, which is the truth in its own way.

Adam sits down next to Kris. He traces a line on the chart with his finger and makes an interested noise, then digs into his plate of stew and says, “I can see why. I never got food like this as a military commander, I can tell you.” He looks at Kris speculatively. “You’re a bit young to be a Captain, aren’t you? Were you some kind of prodigy?”

Kris and Matt both nearly have unfortunate stew related accidents, and Matt warns, “If you make us get gravy on Meg’s schematic she will kill us all. I only wish I were joking.”

“I was very much not a prodigy,” Kris says, and he hears Matt snicker.

“Well, I couldn’t exactly see you playing political games with Ministers or Fleet commanders to get ahead, and your family aren’t significant,” Adam says and then looks guilty. “I mean, in a Court sense. So I guessed it had to be some sort of hidden brilliance.”

“What Kris is hiding is a bleeding heart combined with an insubordinate streak a mile wide,” Matt says around a mouthful of potato, and Adam asks what he means, of course. Which means that Matt will tell The Tale of How Kris Became Captain. Kris looks pointedly at the drawing and tries not to pull a face when Matt starts.

“It was when we were working on board the Mission. We’d been stationed near some pretty heavy fighting, but then we had to pull out. The villagers didn’t have any defences, so Kris here decides to leave them his state of the art Acoustic.”

“Look, we were abandoning those people and Captain Fitzroy wouldn’t leave them anything. So I let them keep my gun,” Kris says. He still doesn’t really understand why people insist on telling this story. It was the least he could have done. He should have done more.

“Against the express orders of our Captain. He was standing in the middle of the village as we were packing up, giving this whole speech about how our resources were too valuable to be wasted, and Kris strides past him and hands this girl his Acoustic.”

Kris really wants to point out that he didn’t ‘stride’, he walked like any normal person, but Matt is not to be stopped. “The Captain went ballistic and told him to take it back at once, but Kris said that as it was his own gun, bought with his own money, he could do what he liked with it.”

Adam looks remarkably unsurprised.

“So then The Captain gives Kris this big lecture about ‘the chain of command being sacrosanct’ and when we get home he drags Kris off to see the Majors, right?” Matt continues.

He looks over at Kris, who admits defeat and takes over the story, “Yes, that’s right, and I was expecting the worst, a demotion or a Grounding order. Then Major DioGuardi stood up and said, ‘Lieutenant Allen. Interesting stunt you pulled there. We’re promoting you to Captain.’”

Adam laughs sharply, like it’s been surprised out of him, and Kris laughs too because it is ludicrous when he thinks about it, the whole situation.

“She said they’d thought I was too modest and unimposing to be a Captain, but that this showed I had ‘initiative and balls.’”

Matt grins. “Lucky git. Captain at twenty-two, it hardly seems far.” Kris catches Matt’s eye and sees the warmth there, so he grins back.

“Then he drags me all the way back to Arkansay so that we can get Katy…”

“I took you to meet the new co-owner and so that you could help pick the parts for your ship,” Kris says gently, because he doesn’t want Adam to think that Kris just marched around ordering people to come work for him. “And then we made the Conway.”

Matt rolls his eyes. “And we all lived happily ever after.”

“I suppose that you get what you give,” Adam says, and his voice is unusually gentle.

Kris says, “That’s what my mama said,” and Adam looks so pleased that Kris can only smile at him, fork stopped halfway to his mouth, until Matt says, “You’re dripping gravy on the schematic. When Meg throws you off the foredeck I will be nothing but vindicated.”

“She’ll probably be made Captain,” Adam says as Kris busies himself trying to blot up the gravy with his sleeve. “Nothing shows initiative like throwing the previous Captain off the ship.”

“That better not be disapproval in your voice. I know all about how you became Commander,” Matt says, his tone suggesting scandal at the very least. Kris has no idea what Matt is referring to, but before he can ask Adam has launched into a story about his former C.O, who had got promoted through a series of ‘liaisons’ with high-ranking Ministers.

Kris and Matt have stories of their own, and they start trying to outdo each other telling Adam all about the other’s failures. Eventually Kris has to concede to Matt because Kris has no comeback to the story about how once, when he’d been a Second Lieutenant, he’d hit a vital pipe on his own ship when he was meant to be firing at an enemy message carrier.

“In my defence, it was really windy that day,” Kris says. “Which isn’t much of a defence, I know. Damn, but the Captain was cross. I wasn’t allowed to fire my gun for a week.”

“Don’t let that fool you, he’s usually a crack shot,” Matt informs Adam and then stretches, cracking his neck.

“I need to get out of this chair,” he adds, standing up. “Goodnight Kris, Commander.”

“Commander?” Kris asks Adam when Matt has gone, and Adam shrugs. “Well, it seemed like the best solution, protocol wise, for the crew to call me that.” He must catch something of Kris’s thoughts on his face because he says, “No, not Adam. I have to maintain _some_ standards.”

Kris tries to hide the start of an utterly nonsensical smile with a yawn and Adam makes a distressed noise and says, “God, I’m sorry, I should have let you go to bed hours ago. You must be exhausted, did you get any sleep?”

“Not really,” Kris confesses. “I was so tired earlier I even started getting gloomy about being Captain.” It’s been preying on his mind all day and it’s actually a relief to say it out loud, even as he tries to pass it off as a result of being exhausted.

“I thought you loved it?” Adam says, and Kris nods quickly. “I do, I absolutely do, it’s just the madness of today and …” he trails off because it’s almost impossible to put it into words, this overwhelmed feeling he gets sometimes, the weight of expectations.

“I won’t pretend to understand completely,” Adam says, rolling up the schematic and going to his case on the bunk, “but I’m a Commander in the army. I know what it’s like to be responsible for other people’s lives.”

“This is a very serious conversation to be having while getting ready for bed,” Kris says, sitting down and unlacing his boots. He doesn’t think he can look at Adam right now.

“All the best conversations are had in the lead up to bed,” Adam says, a little too innocent.

Kris settles his expression before he looks up and says, “Surely you mean all the best conversations lead to bed.”

Adam gives him an impressed look. “Well played.”

“Try to remember that I’ve been in the military a long time. You’re going to have to try a lot harder.”

“It’s the face,” Adam tells him, taking off his waistcoat. “It’s deceptive.”

Kris turns on the lamp by his bed and Adam makes a small noise and comes over to investigate, kneeling by Kris’ bunk and following the linkages that lead out through the wall.

“It’s air powered, only works when we’re moving” Kris explains, flicking at the switch to make it stop and start again. When the light comes back on Adam is looking over with that expression of open wonder that he gets sometimes.

“Valve fetish,” Kris says fondly, and Adam stands up quickly and goes back to his own bunk.

“I should take this off before I forget,” he says and starts to work at a buckle at his shoulder, where the Upgrade goes under his shirt, “or else I’ll wake up with gear teeth digging into me, not for the first time.” His voice is missing the component that makes it real, makes it Adam’s voice and not the Prince’s or the Commander’s.

Kris can’t begin to guess what he did to make Adam close up like that so he asks politely, “You don’t notice it?” He gets under the blankets, sighing with relief as he lets his body relax. He always appreciates the bunk after days like today; it almost seems comfortable, which makes a pleasant change.

“I barely notice it most of the time, which is good, it means I’m in sync with it,” Adam says. “When I get home, I’m going to take Cassidy out for dinner or something; it’s an amazing piece of work.”

“What _will_ you do when you get home?” Kris can’t believe it’s taken him this long to think to ask. “I mean, do you have a plan? What will you do about Gokey?”

“There’s nothing much I can do until I get there and see what’s what,” Adam says, “seeing as we know next to nothing about the extent of his machinations.”

“But what if he’s already claimed the throne?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Adam says, voice frayed by sleepiness. “Actually, no, we’ve got an airship, there’s no need to worry about bridges at all. Even if there turns out to be a river. Which there very well may not be, we shouldn't count our rivers before they hatch....”

“Okay,” Kris mumbles, too tired to fight extended metaphors, and he lets the world slide into hazy softness.

&&&&&

Adam is still fast asleep when Kris wakes up. He’s spent too long in the Fleet to sleep much past six, his body conditioned by years of drills and lectures on tardiness. He’s Captain now but it’s practically worse because although there’s no one to lecture him, he has to be ready to command at any hour.

Adam has flung out his arm in his sleep. It looks strangely naked without the Upgrade. Kris shakes his head at himself and goes over to the basin where he runs the tap and splashes loudly. Then he gets dressed, letting his boot fall on the floor with a thump, then pulls his chair out with a scrape. When none of this seems to have an effect he says, “Morning,” very loudly.

Adam scrubs his hand over his face and looks over at Kris with dark, hazy eyes, red playing over the edges of his cheeks.

“Good morning,” he says, sitting up and pulling at his sleeves and collar so that they cover more of his skin.

“I know it’s early, but I have to go give a crew briefing in, oh, ten minutes, and I’ve a quick question, now that we are both vaguely awake. If you could?”

“This is unfair. I wasn’t allowed to hijack you while you were all groggy,” Adam grumbles, but he gets up and washes his face, then looks at Kris expectantly.

“Will there be consequences, do you think? For us, the Conway, I mean, when we get home? I need to know what to prepare my crew for.”

“Whatever happens, I don’t think Gokey can do anything to you for following orders. Even he’s not that much of a dick. Although he tries,” Adam says bitterly.

Kris can’t quite believe that Adam could hate anyone so much that it drips harshly into the polite tone of his voice. Adam has shut up his face again, though, so Kris doesn’t ask.

Adam doesn’t say anything else for a few moments, he just sorts through his suitcase until he finds a shirt that is to his satisfaction and sets it on the bed.

“So, what’s the plan for today?” He rummages again, hair messing over his eyes.

“Um, well, you are free to do as you like, obviously. I have the briefing this morning with the crew and some checks to do. But I should get this afternoon off because I’m on night shift tonight.” Kris tries to sound neutral about it, but Adam looks up from his seemingly bottomless suitcase and says, with a small smile, “It’s the worst, isn’t it? Night patrol really plays on all those dreams you have as a child about monsters in the shadows. But at least the paranoia breaks up the monotony.” His laugh is jarringly merry.

“I’ll be back later. You’ll have to amuse yourself in the mean time, I’m afraid,” Kris says, gathering up the necessary papers from his desk.

Adam makes his eyes go big and tragic. Kris laughs, balls up a piece of paper and throws it at him. Adam catches it with his left hand and throws it back in one effortless movement.

Kris keeps smiling to himself throughout the meeting every time he has to consult his now very crumpled food supplies list.

 

&&&&&

  
Anoop holds up a schematic then turns it round. And then round again. Meg sighs and turns it back to its original position.

“It’s always the smart ones,” she mutters with a long suffering air and a smile that suggests that she doesn’t mind so much. She points at the far right drive linkage and then jabs her finger onto the drawing. “See?” she says, and Anoop nods his head quickly.

Kris peers at the engine and tries to visualise Meg’s modifications. He walks around the room to get a new angle, but it’s no good, he can’t quite make it all make sense in his head. He gets in under the pistons, trying to see if being where the new parts will go helps.

Despite the lull in the usual banter he can’t quite seem to get it, still. His brain can’t seem to focus today, flitting about of its own accord, restless.

“Could you hand me that first sketch again, Meg?” he calls.

There is a giggle and then a hand appears under the piping. On reflection Kris should have known something was up from the moment his crew stopped talking.

“Thank you, _Adam_ ,” he says.

Adam is still laughing, pleased and infectious, when Kris extricates himself, with Meg and Anoop restraining themselves to conspiratorial snickers.

“So this is what you call an afternoon off,” Adam says, laughter still threaded through his voice. “Very relaxing, I’m sure.”

“Oh, are you not on shift?” Meg asks, then frowns. “Wait, I don’t think I am either.”

Adam throws up his hands and says, “Honestly, you’re all as bad as each other.”

“Not me,” Anoop says. “I’m here very much under duress. I can think of a hundred things I would rather be doing. And if not, I have letters home to write.”

“Anoop is a good boy who writes home every week,” Meg tells Adam, who raises his eyebrows very expressively.

“Oh yes. And his mother still sends him food,” she adds.

“See if I share my cake with you again,” Anoop huffs, but Meg smiles at him and he brightens under her sunny unrepentance.

“There now. I’d much rather be eating cake, for example,” Anoop says, and Adam nods along with Meg.

“Or taking a nice long shower,” he suggests.

Anoop says, “Or reading a good book.”

“Or playing cards,” Meg and Anoop say together.

“What about you, Captain Kristopher?” Adam inquires, eyebrows raised in high judgement again.

“Oh, I’m not much good at cards. Terrible at bluffing, you see,” Kris confesses. He’s lost more money and far more dignity than he likes to think about over the years because of that.

“Alright, then what do you for fun?”

Meg and Anoop promptly fall about laughing.

“Oi! I resent that. I have fun, I know how to relax,” Kris protests. He feels like he should be able to tell teacher that the other children are picking on him, except he’s the teacher in this situation as well.

“Lying is a sin, Captain,” says Meg with a solemn nod.

“The lady has made quite the accusation. State your defence, Captain Allen,” Adam says gravely, resting easily on the casing to the right of the prop drive as if he’d spent inches his whole life from limb crushing machinery .

“I defer to the judgement of the Commander. He is by far the most qualified in… having fun,” Anoop says and winks at Adam in a very unnecessary way.

Kris flounders a little at that while Meg, the traitor, goes over and leans on the casing next to Adam.

“I read,” Kris says hopefully.

“Do you mean things like this?” Adam produces a book from his pocket with the triumphant air of someone producing the only key to your handcuffs. Which... Yes.

Meg takes the book from Adam and reads, “Computational Steam Dynamics, A Guide.”

“They’re all like that, every single book in our room,"  Adam says, eyes wicked even as he affects despair.

“Not even a single novel?” Meg looks shocked, which Kris feels is unfair. Meg is usually the one who, when it came to conversations that don’t involve engines or her family, tends to treat them like mental games of hot potato.

“Not a one,” Adam confirms.

“Someone has to think of these things. Not all of us can live a life of decadence, you know,” Kris teases, only Adam’s merry expression stumbles and falls from his face, and that wasn’t the idea, not at all.

“I see my reputation precedes me,” Meg laughs. She tosses her head, glancing quickly at Adam from under her hair. “I was a wild child, what can I say?”

Adam’s expression lights back up in the face of her. He holds out a hand and spins her into a twirling dance around the room. They advance on Kris who retreats backwards. “I don’t dance, don’t ask me.”

Adam lets Meg spin away and he ruffles Kris’s hair before Kris can stop him. “Live a little,” he says.

“Trust him, he is a man who knows how to let loose,” Anoop says with a laugh, like there’s a punchline that Kris just isn’t getting. Adam’s hand stops dead in Kris’s hair, then he pulls it back. It’s like Adam keeps forgetting where he is, that it’s a joke with nothing worse than a smile behind it, not something he needs to have his defences ready for.

“Am I missing something?” Kris asks, and all three turn to him with disbelieving expressions.

Adam puts on a pout and says, “Well, I’m very disappointed. I thought my exploits were legendary.”

“Oh, they are,” Anoop assures him.

Meg nods enthusiastically and asks, “Is it all true? The costume parties, the fifty piece orchestra, the six day masquerade ball, the dancing boys…”

“Sadly, the dancing boys are a myth," Adam interrupts. "And it was a hundred piece orchestra, actually. But the rest sounds right. As far as I can remember.”

“It must have been wonderful,” Meg sighs.

“It was, in its way. It’s not a period of my life I have regrets about. But it’s not one I’d care to repeat, either.” Adam’s voice keeps tipping into something much more intimate than Kris is used to hearing out here. He can’t even begin to imagine this other life of Adam’s; it’s so very far removed his own sphere of experience.

“Why on earth not?” Anoop asks, incredulous.

“It wasn’t... It wasn’t a life, exactly. It was marvellous fun, but terrible idleness. It was like drifting. I had nothing to aim for, you see,” Adam explains, hands in his pockets and eyes very blue, somehow.

Kris tries to imagine what that must have been like. He’s carried the blueprints for his and Katy’s airship around with him for half his life - what would he have been like without his two girls to push him in the right direction? And Adam is so full of drive and energy that without anything to do with them, well… A ship without a rudder is just a crash waiting to happen.

“I think my favourite story is the one about the time you nearly burned down a whole wing of the Mansion by setting a curtain on fire with your hat,” Meg says.

Adam looks charmed and not even slightly embarrassed. “That was probably my most notorious moment, it’s true. Well. Except for the exiling incident, obviously.”

“Um, the exiling incident?” Kris asks. He really should have kept a better track of what went on at the Mansion. For one thing, it all sounds far more dramatic than he had ever imagined.

“I wasn’t actually exiled. Only nearly exiled. Threatened with it, anyway.”

“That’s nearer than I’d like to go,” Anoop mutters. “I thought you had no regrets.”

“I don’t. I was in love, and my father didn’t approve and… I don’t regret it. I stood up for us, for him, because I loved him. I’ll never regret doing that.”

Adam’s words are light and honest, but to Kris they feel like standing too close to a firing cannon - leaving him reeling a little, his ears ringing. He tries to imagine standing somewhere and saying, “I loved him,” as easy as that, and he’s never been jealous of Adam before, but right now the envy is so bitter he can almost taste it.

Adam has stopped talking and is watching Kris with an intense, almost worried expression.

“I’m not… Adam. I’m not judging. I don’t. It’s not that I mind…” Kris starts but he can’t explain, he just can’t. After so many years of denial, his mind won’t even go near that path of thinking, shying away from it like a spooked horse.

“It’s rather the opposite,” Meg says gently, looking over at Kris because she knows, and she knows that he wants Adam to, as well.

There is a long pause while several mental readjustments clearly have to be made. Kris watches Adam’s face, or what he can see of it - Adam is looking down and away - but the curve of his mouth against the angle of his jaw is all Kris needs. It gets easier each day to read between the lines that make up Adam.

So when something shifts Kris is prepared, has already calmed his expression as much as he can before Adam starts to look up again Adam looks perfectly put back together again, his voice light and implausibly amused, as he says, “So, that’s why you laughed when I asked if you and Katy were...” He makes the hand gesture that is apparently his go-to sign for ‘married’.

Anoop and Meg start to snicker at that but stop when Kris gives them his best Captainly Glare, which is gratifying. Kris is secure in his command, but this has hardly been your everyday situation. He never thought he would be nostalgic for those.

“Something like that,” Kris allows. He takes a very deep breath and tries to channel some of Adam’s implausible lightness. “Come now, this is supposed to be my afternoon off.”

“I think we can take it from here, Captain, if you want to go,” Meg says, and Anoop nods obediently.

“Thanks, Meg,” Kris says and holds her gaze for a moment. Then he picks up the blueprints from the floor and asks, “Adam? Are you done here?”

Adam looks over to where Anoop and Meg are bent over the original blueprint, heads close and hands skimming over the paper in tandem.

“I don’t think we’re needed here any more,” he says, with a conspiratorial smile.

In the corridor Kris doesn’t look at Adam, just bumps his shoulder and says, “You know, when a Captain of an active military vessel can honestly say his life was less complicated before you arrived…”

“Yes. I’m looking into the state of my life. Many apologies for it,” Adam says. Kris steals a look at him. For all his practised casualness, Adam’s gaze is fixed and his jaw is still set a little tight.

Kris opens the door for Adam automatically, even though Adam isn’t technically a guest, it’s their cabin now. Adam catches Kris’s eye in a silent thank you, and Kris can feel them both relax.

“I won’t stay,” Adam says, crossing the room and picking his jacket up. “I thought I might take a couple of books and go read up on deck. I know you have valuable sleeping pencilled in around now.”

“My schedule is flexible, but yes, some sleep would be useful.” Kris sits down on his bed and undoes his cuff buttons. Adam laughs and says, “Alright, I’m going, there’s no need to undress already. Just let me pick out a book and I’ll be out of your hair.”

“It’s fine, Adam. Stay as long as you like,” Kris tells him, because that laugh still wasn’t right, was more like the echo of normality.

Adam trails his hand across the spines of Kris’s much maligned collection of books, and picks one off the shelf with a satisfied expression.

“This one looks particularly terrible,” he says. Kris rolls his eyes and concentrates on unlacing his boots.

Abruptly, Adam starts to speak again. “I wasn’t supposed to be the Heir, you know. I…” Adam swallows, hard. “I had an older brother. Neil. He would have been a great Idol; he was so much smarter than me. So me and Allie, we were allowed to, well, run a bit wild.”

He’s looking at Kris but his eyes are far away, watching his past.

“We got into trouble, but it didn’t matter because it wasn’t like either of us were ever going to be anything but minor royalty, trotted out for functions and the occasional wedding. They had Neil to be their Idol.”

Adam’s fingers are gripping the book tight, as if the only way he can keep his voice that calm is to channel out the tension through his hands. It’s painful to see. Kris has to sit on his own hands stop himself from reaching out and smoothing out the harsh lines of Adam’s fingers.

“Daniel, the priss, was always making snide remarks about Allie and me. He has terribly strict parents, you see, very keen on duty and devotion. They brought him up to be rather old fashioned, and our messing around didn’t exactly sit well with that. Neil just thought he was funny,” Adam adds, a small, sad twist ghosting round his mouth.

“I heard Prince Neil went missing,” Kris says, because he doesn’t know how to even begin. He’d heard the story, vaguely known the facts, but he’d never given it much thought. It had all been before he came to the Mansion, when Adam and Allie were names he didn’t even know the Prince and Princess had, let alone consider using. When he had never had to watch Adam struggle for control like this, and feel adrift.

“He did. They think he drowned. Idiot.”

Adam is barely constructing sentences any more, which is always a bad sign. Kris wonders if he should - make some soothing tea or something, anything would be better than sitting uselessly on his bunk with only one shoe on and probably looking like he’s been struck on the head.

“I’m sorry,” he offers, inadequately.

“It… It changed things. Changed me,” Adam tells him. His face can’t seem to settle on an expression, flitting from hurt to wistful to hopeless. Damn the tea, damn everything, all Kris wants to do is to shut Adam away somewhere safe, because the raw emotion on his face is too much, too intimate to let anyone see.

“And so that’s why you joined the army?” Kris asks, in lieu of being able to do or say or _think_ anything useful.

“Not exactly. Remember how I said I was almost exiled? Father wanted me out of the Mansion, one way or another.” Kris has never heard Adam call the Idol that before. Adam finally looks at Kris, as if he knows he can’t say this with words alone. “So he settled on sending me to the borders,” he finishes with a casual shrug and intent eyes.

At that point Kris had been navigating his first year as Captain, trying not to break too many rules and going to more official dinners than he ever wanted. And he had heard the story of the Prince going off to fight, and maybe there had been a few wink-nudge moments that Kris hadn't had the energy or interest to wonder about. But there it had been, the turning point of Adam’s life, reduced to an amusing anecdote over entrees.

“My father made it as difficult as possible, made me a Commander. He thought I’d give up after a month and have to come home with my tail between my legs, ready to repent and play the good son. But I... I liked it. It felt like I was actually doing something, you see. Making a difference. And I was good at my job.” Adam says that like it’s a secret, a shameful confession. Whereas in truth, he had picked a hopeless, terrible combination of a border dispute and a civil war and somehow turned it around. Kris may not know politics, but he knows war. Adam had been something special.

“I heard as much. You were talk of the Fleet, of everyone, really.” It’s a little hard to reconcile this Adam with the Commander who ran a ruthlessly brilliant campaign. Even harder to imagine that either of them could once have been the hedonistic, aimless Prince.

"Oh, so _this_ you've heard of," Adam says, rolling his eyes. Kris is about to defend his select range of interests, again, but Adam cuts him off. "Anyway, it’s fine. I've taken up enough of your time already. You should be fast asleep by now."

Kris feels a little dismissed, but then he notices the easy, loose line of Adam's back and the book resting in his hand as he turns to leave. He's not right, but he's better, at least. Adam heads for the door and then stops, silent for a few long seconds.

“Thank you,” he says quietly, not turning all the way back around. He’s already leaving when Kris, caught on the soft sincerity of Adam’s voice, remembers to say, “It’s fine.”

&&&&&

Night shift is exactly as mind numbing as Kris remembered. He spends some time up on deck, drinks some tea and wanders the corridors aimlessly.

He decides to go visit the engine and finds Michael there, watching the gears go round in an almost hypnotised fashion.

“Everything alright here?” he asks. Michael doesn’t even start, just says, “Evening, Captain. Anything I can do for you?”

“Just seeing how you were. Night shift can get you down,” Kris sighs, and shovels some more coal into the engine, to feel useful.

Michael laughs. “I’ve raised three children; sleep deprivation is practically routine to me.”

“It’s the boredom that’ll get you,” Kris says, except he should have known better, because the bell on the wall next to him starts to ring almost exactly as he finishes the sentence.

He and Michael drop everything and head for the look out, because Lil wouldn’t set that bell off unless they were in serious trouble.

“This is all your fault. Just don’t say anything like ‘how bad could it be’, okay?” Michael tells Kris as they rush up the stairs. Kris tries to smile, but his mind is already being pulled in all directions by the potential disasters that could await them.

Lil is standing in a pool of light, turning the gear handle that will be setting bells ringing all over the ship. She looks up as Kris approaches and her face is determined, though her eyes are worried.

“Two ships approaching, which I’ve identified as known hostiles,” she says, leaving the bell and leading them to the telescope array. “You can make them out quite clearly now. Approximately 15 minutes away.”

Kris looks through the eyepiece she indicates and his heart sinks. The ships are small but heavily armed mercenary vessels, covered in symbols and graffiti. Skypirates, his first Captain had called them, laugh brittle as he tried to reassure his newest recruits before the attack.

“They shouldn’t be anywhere near this quadrant,” Lil says as Kris straightens up. “They would have to get past at least two of our gun towers to be coming from that direction.”

There’s no way those ships could have simply flown by manned, armed towers. It’s a puzzle, and Kris doesn’t think he’s going to like the solution, when he has time to figure it out. Right now, there’s only one important conclusion. “They’re here for us, then,” Kris says, grimly. “Michael, ring the other bell. Wake the crew.”

Michael salutes smartly. It makes Kris feel proud and sick at the same time, his crew, ready for battle. He needs his gun.

His mind is already so busy making plans that it’s almost a shock when he opens the door to his room and Adam is standing there already dressed, looking confused and concerned.

“I’m assuming the frantic bells are not a good sign?” he says, and Kris can only shake his head as he takes his Acoustic out of the box under his bed and loads it.

“Two mercenary airships, ETA about 15 minutes. We are in for trouble.”

“Mercenaries? Here?” Adam asks, and Kris shouldn’t be surprised that Adam is not only keeping track but grasps all the implications.

“Exactly. So they can only be after one thing, and I don’t plan on falling out of the sky today.”

“Right,” Adam says, pulling on his coat and hat. “Where do you need me?”

Kris starts. “What? I mean, I know you were in army but it’s hardly the same thing. Do you have any experience with long-range weaponry? Do you even have a gun?”

“What did you think this,” Adam gestures at his Upgrade, “was for? Decoration?” He gives Kris a fiendish grin, straightens his arm and then twists it inside the Upgrade. Something clicks, a few gears start to turn and Kris finds himself literally staring down the barrel of a gun, Adam’s smile even more devilish over the top of it.

“So, what’s the plan?” asks Adam.

“Come with me and you’ll find out,” Kris answers, and Adam is halfway to the door in a second.

As they walk Kris can’t help blurting out, “That is incredible.” He looks closer now, unashamed. “Are those tiny compression cylinders?”

“For longer range or heavy lifting,” Adam explains as Kris motions him up the stairs onto deck.

“In my defence, it could have been for decoration. I mean...” Kris attempts to make a hand movement that will encompass everything from the heels on Adam’s boots through the cogs threaded on belts and chains to the feather in his hat. “Not beyond the realm of possibility,” he says, amusement breaking into his voice.

“Captain, I am more than just a pretty face,” Adam teases, shaking his head at Kris’s apparent stupidity.

Kris stops for a moment, turning on the steps to the Bridge and looking out into the night. He can see a light in the distance, bobbing innocently in the darkness. Adam follows his gaze and his face hardens.

“Here they come,” he says.

Kris opens the door to where Katy, Matt, and Anoop are waiting.

“Options?” Kris asks.

Matt grimaces. “Not a lot. We can’t out-fly them, we know that much. They’re both smaller and lighter than us. We might be able to out gun one or the other, but certainly not both at once.” He gives Kris an almost apologetic look. “We left most of our cannons behind so we’d be lighter. For speed. We didn’t think…”

“I know, it’s a bloody shock to us all,” Kris says. “Never mind that now. What can we do?”

“It’s unlikely that we can take down the larger ship with our available weapons. To have even a chance, we’d have to concentrate all our firepower on it, but if we do that we get picked off by the smaller ship.”

“It’s a tactic this group have been using for some time, according to the intel we’ve got on file from previous attacks,” Katy says, indicating the table spread with reports. “It’s not fool proof, but fairly successful, I’m afraid.”

“The smaller ship is weaker, but hard to take down quickly with gun fire because of its quickness and design. And if we spend time firing at that ship, we’ll be a sitting duck for the other one,” Matt finishes. He tries for a smile and misses.

“So we ram the larger ship,” Kris says, and he knows it’s a risky, rough idea, but rough is really all they have time for. He also knows exactly how strong the Conway is, right down to the inches of her hull thickness. She’ll hold.

“Ram them?” Adam repeats, eyebrows raised high.

“Those ships aren’t built for that kind of combat, they rely on speed and their gun batteries. I really think it could work.”

“Alright. Then we can deal with the other ship on equal terms,” Katy says and the faith in her voice makes Kris put his arm round her, holding her close.

“We can take her,” Kris says. “I trust my ship and my crew. Besides, we have a secret weapon.” He nods at Adam, who explains about his Upgrade and then casually adds, “Oh, and I also happen to be a military commander with a year in a war zone. I might be able to help with your artillery strategy.”

Anoop gives him a teasing look. “You mean, there’s more to gunning than shouting ‘fire’?”

Kris sees his hand shaking slightly as he pulls a lever, though. Anoop always makes jokes when he’s nervous. Matt says, “Idiot,” in an amused voice and pats Anoop on the shoulder. Adam’s glare mutes a little.

“In terms of artillery, we’re down to one cannon, but it’s a beauty.” Matt tells Adam. “Can’t offer you legions of men, either, me and Michael will have to do, and the Captain, of course.”

“That’s it?” Adam asks, and worry flashes across his face, just for a second. The expression that replaces it is a new one to Kris, and he figures he must be seeing Commander Adam for the first time. It’s… striking.

“That’s it.”

The bell from the look out rings five times.

“Okay, five minutes, people. Matt, Adam, I need you to give us cover as we go in. Take Michael and Scott, get the guns ready. And make sure everyone is also armed for hand-to-hand. I hope it won’t come to that, but being boarded is always a risk.”

“Oh great,” Matt frowns. “Come on, Commander, let’s go see about those guns.”

“Katy, I need you with Meg, keep the engine going no matter what, okay?” Kris says.

“Will do. Keep safe,” she says. She turns to go, but Kris catches her shoulder, salutes and says softly, “Will do, Kat”

Katy salutes back, holding his gaze for a crowded second, then leaves.

Kris looks at Anoop, “I trust you can steer us into another ship? I realise it goes against every one of your navigator’s instincts, but…”

“Won’t be a problem, Captain,” Anoop says, consulting at his dials. “I should have good visual any moment now.”

Kris says, “Never thought it would be,” and Anoop seems to stand a little taller behind the controls.

“I’ll try and hit just forward of broadside, rather than head on. That way we shouldn’t lose anything vital. The lookout is still going to be pretty close to the action, though.”

Kris nods. “I’ll go warn Lil, don’t worry. After we hit, get us away as soon as you can.”

He looks out across his ship, over the deck, still too cluttered, over the lookout, the glass of the instruments shining, and finally to where the lights are now parts of indistinct shapes against the darkness, and he feels cold to his bones.

He almost runs to the lookout. Thankfully his feet know the way instinctively, because his brain is occupied with everything that could go wrong and what exactly he is going to do about it.

Lil is waiting at the top of the steep steps, and she asks, “What’s the plan?” as soon as Kris is within shouting distance.

“Get ready to come down from there, we’re going to try and ram the larger ship,” Kris tells her. She opens her mouth, then seems to think better of it and goes back to the array, closing down most of the telescopes.

“They probably won’t survive, but this way I’m giving them a fighting chance,” she sighs, and pulls the lever that will signal to Anoop again.

“Once we’ve hit, there’s a chance they’ll try and board us,” Kris says, fingers straying down to wrap round the handle of his Acoustic, tucked safely into his belt.

Lil bends down and pulls a wicked looking knife out of her boot. Clearly tonight is the night for unexpected weaponry.

“Oh, I’m ready,” she says, and her smile is blade-sharp. She signals Anoop again and then gives the array one last pat.

“Better find yourself a good spot for shooting,” Lil says with a smirk as they start back down the steps. “Don’t want to hit a pipe.”

Kris decides he can let that go, right now. Lil settles in under the stairs, and Kris goes back to check on the guns in place around the steps from the bridge. Adam is already standing on a gun emplacement, aiming at the ships in the distance, and as Kris arrives next to him he fires the Upgrade. A light goes out. Kris and Matt exchange an impressed look. The two ships move apart, clearly trying to avoid making too obvious a target.

“This was in the intel. The larger ship will try and get closer and pick off our key gunners.” Matt says, handing Adam a case of ammunition.

“Good,” Kris and Adam say together and then there is the whip crack sound of gunfire.

“We’re going to need that cover from the small ship about now,” Adam says. “Load long range weapons.”

The ship is close enough now that Kris can make out the graffiti painted on its side, a tally of their victims interspersed with symbols, scrawled in white paint all over the hull. The other ship is still more indistinct, but Kris spots the tell tale sparks coming from a gun position. He takes careful aim, letting the world narrow to that one point, and fires.

Then the Conway surges forward. The mercenary ship tries to turn but they are too slow, too late.

There’s nothing that Kris can do now except yell, “Brace!” and duck down behind the outer railing. He takes a breath and then the world is nothing but noise, everything seems to be screaming and breaking. He keeps his eyes shut and his head down until the shuddering stops and the noise fades to shattering and yelling, then stands up, hanging on to the rail.

Matt is already aiming the cannon at the larger ship, but Adam is still, seemingly transfixed by something in the cloud of dust and splinters that is the far end of the ship. As it clear, Kris can see they’ve done it. The Conway is embedded in the side of the enemy ship, whose hull is a wreck of broken wood and twisted metal. Kris can see her insides spilling out, gears and pipes exposed, smoke and steam pouring from the hole they’ve made in her side.

He looks back and he can see Anoop through the shattered windows at the front of the bridge, pulling levers frantically, trying to get them away, then something hits the stairs next to him and Matt yells, “Boarders!”

Adam calls, “Return fire!” and Kris turns and pulls the trigger in one movement. A man standing on the Conway’s railing, gun raised, seems to freeze for a second and then falls backwards. Michael whoops in triumph and Kris takes cover behind the cannon as he reloads.

“Show-off,” he hears Adam say. Kris looks up to where Adam is sighting his weapon, arm outstretched and fist clenched, gaze locked on his target even as he commands, “And Matt, keep the cannon on the other ship. Aim for the front gun emplacement, I think that’s where their heavy artillery is.”

The Upgrade fires, gears turning so fast that they blur. Adam nods, satisfied at his shot, and calls, “There’s more. Up on the lookout, go, go!”

The Conway lurches sideways, and splinters fly everywhere, stinging the side of Kris’s face as he takes cover again.

“We must have got stuck,” Adam chokes out beside him.“Damn, there’s no way I can hit anything in this. I think we’ve lost some lights.”

“There’s no way they can either,” Kris points out, and yells, “Prepare for hand-to-hand,” hoping that he can be heard over the chaos.

“If we went now, we could surprise them …” Adam starts, peering over the top of the cannon. “And take some prisoners, get some information,” Kris finishes. Adam nods and they make their way round to the emplacement shielding that Matt and Michael are crouched behind.

“Matt, you cover us, then follow. Michael, you stay here. I want you to be firing on the smaller ship as soon as you have any sort of visual,” Kris says.

They creep out, weapons forward, through the haze that only seems to be thickening. Something must be on fire, and Kris hopes it is not something of his.

There is suddenly a scream and Kris hears glass smashing, then the sickening sound of bone snapping. Adam motions Kris up to the lookout and stands at the foot of the stairs, prepared to fire. Kris tries to be quiet as he mounts the stairs, but when he reaches the top he sees he needn’t have. Lil is leaning heavily on the array, but she’s holding her knife to the throat of a short man covered in tattoos that match the symbols that used to decorate his hull. His arm looks broken, and Lil is bleeding heavily from cuts on her cheek and shoulder.

“He tried to get me in the face, but I was faster,” Lil says. “Do you have him?”

Kris brings his Acoustic up to inches from the man’s nose and lets the catch drop, the click very clear. “Yes,” Kris says, “I have him.” The mercenary swallows.

Lil steps sideways and uses her knife to cut through a rope that Kris hadn’t even noticed, then places it back at the man’s throat. The mercenaries must have thrown hooks on lines to keep the Conway near for boarding. The bow swings sideways, out of the dust cloud, and Kris can see the deck again. Matt has the barrel of his gun pressed to another man’s temple and Adam is stalking round a pile of supplies. There is a body on the deck just by the steps, knife still in hand. Kris looks away.

The Conway finally breaks free of the other ship, which is already sinking towards the ground. Kris can’t quite believe it. They’ve knocked her out of the goddamn sky. The Conway lurches unsteadily, and Kris tries to hang on to something not made of glass. They still seem to be flying, to his massive relief, albeit slowly and at a slant.

“Don’t even _think_ about it,” Adam’s voice rings out. Kris follows his line of sight and the aim of his arm to where a mercenary is pointing a gun directly at Kris and Lil.

Kris yells, “Drop your weapon,” and points his Acoustic at the man for good measure. He obeys and Adam goes and picks it up, then grabs the mercenary by the neck and says something that Kris can’t hear. The man’s face is going purple, and Kris has to yell again, “We are taking prisoners, remember?” Adam lets the man go and he crumples to the floor.

“Right, prisoners to the brig,” Kris orders, stepping backwards so that Lil can manoeuvre her captured mercenary down the stairs. We’ve still got a whole other ship to deal with, everyone.”

He trains his gun on Matt’s prisoner and says, “Matt, Adam, you get back to the guns. We’ll take them from here.” Adam drags the third man to his feet and almost throws him at Kris.

As they come down the stairs, Kris hears the rattle of gunfire above them. They shut the prisoners in their tiny brig, which they usually use more like a safe, and Lil slumps against the wall. There are glass shards in her hand, which Kris hadn’t seen in the dim light outside, and blood is still running down her cheek, too much blood for Kris’s liking.

“You need to go sort those out,” he says, dabbing at the slash across her shoulder with his handkerchief. “You’re not going back out into the line of fire like this, no way. You could pass out from blood loss, or worse.”

“I can still be useful. I’ll be fine. You need me,” Lil insists, wincing as she pulls glass from her palm.

“I need you to stay here and keep an eye on these useless degenerates” Kris tells her, and Lil looks at the prisoners through the bars of the door.

“Piece of cake,” she says. “I’ll need a gun, though. Just in case.”

Kris goes to find Scott, who is dealing with all the supplies, but instead he collides with Katy, running full pelt round a corner.

Kris says,“I don’t know how much info you’ve been getting from the Bridge, we’ve forced the larger ship to ground. Took out all but three boarders. Lil’s injured, I’ve got her guarding the brig. But it worked, Kat, it _worked_.” Katy only manages to look half relieved at best so he asks, “Problems?” and she nods.

“The impact was pretty brutal. We’ve lost a stabiliser, which is bad but not critical. But we’ve completely lost the signalling system. No messages are getting from one part of the ship to another. Plus Meg thinks one of the drive gearage rods might be damaged, but that’s minor in comparison.”

“Then we’ve no lookout _and_ no input from anywhere else on the ship. We’re flying blind.”

“We’ve got to tell the Bridge, for a start,” Katy says, and dashes off as soon as Kris nods his agreement.

Kris carries on to the store, where Scott is loading some revolvers. As he hears Kris come in, he aims one right at Kris’s head, then lowers it quickly when he looks up and sees who it is.

“Sorry,” he says, “But there was talk of boarders.”

“Taken care of,” Kris says, and picks up two more guns and a box of ammo for his Acoustic. “The signalling system is down, I’m afraid. So you’ll have to check yourself if Meg or Anoop want anything. Meg is almost definitely going to need parts.”

“I’m on it, Captain,” Scott says with a salute, and Kris makes his way back to the deck, where Adam meets him, looking grim.

“That ship is damn fast, and they keep popping out of nowhere without a lookout to keep an eye on them. Also, Matt’s been shot,” Adam says, flatly.

“Only very slightly,” Matt assures Kris, who can only shake his head. Matt fires at the mercenary ship with his revolver, then helps Michael turn the cannon and looks at Kris and Adam. “See, I’m fine,” he says. “It barely caught my arm. I’m hardly bleeding at all, and we have more serious things to worry about, now.”

“Matthew Giraud, tie your tourniquet tighter, you are ‘hardly bleeding’ right through it,” Katy says sternly from where she is propping the door to the Bridge open.

The mercenary ship disappears from Kris’s view and everyone curses.

“We need someone on the lookout,” Adam says, “and fast. Even if they can’t use the signalling levers, they could, signal with their hands or something. They’d have a better chance of seeing where the ship was coming at us from if they were up there.”

“We can’t spare anyone from here, can we?” Kris says, knowing that it’s not really a question. They need everyone firing just to stand a chance. Adam doesn’t even bother to reply.

“Not Anoop or Meg, because they both really have their hands full,” Katy calls down. “I’ll go.”

“No. You are non-combat; you shouldn’t even be up here right now. Meg will be needing you in the engine room,” Kris points out, but Katy has angled her head in that determined way of hers.

“Don’t start that combat training required crap,” she says, disdainfully. “We don’t really have a choice right now, I’m your only option. You know I take the lookout sometimes. Needs must, Kris.”

As if to prove her damn point, the ship comes up on the other side and cannon fire rips into the Conway before they have a chance to take cover, let alone return fire.

“I can signal to one of you, and you can call it out for the guns, and for Anoop, too.”

“If there’s no one else…” Adam says, and his expression is gentle even as Kris glares at him, feeling undermined. “Captain, we need this. I don’t like it any more than you do.”

Kris has a sudden flash of memory, Katy and Adam laughing together over supper, and he can’t glare any more.

“Okay,” he says, “signal to me, like we do when it’s bad weather and we need to cast off. I’ll be at the top of the stairs. Stay as low as you can, and watch out, there’s glass everywhere up there. Go now, while we’re not under fire.”

Katy takes off at a run across the deck, making it to the lookout just as the enemy ship swerves in to view. The cannon is facing the right way this time, and they get a hit on something that tears away, shadowy wood replaced by the light of mechanisms spitting sparks into the night.

Kris fires at the exposed propeller driver and gets a hit, chains flying in all directions. The Conway turns sharply and he has to hold onto a railing, hoping that this is a tactic and not another system giving out.

“I believe in you,” he says under his breath, to himself and God and his crew and his ship.

He looks across at Katy, yellow jacket shining like a beacon, and she yells and signals, “Right!”

“On your right,” Kris calls. Adam whirls round and starts firing and rattling out orders at once. The sound of gunfire reverberates around the whole ship, and it’s so loud Kris can’t tell if it their shots or the enemy’s.

He takes aim again, but before he can fire the remaining ship lists with a scream of metal sliding over metal, and he hears Adam’s yell of triumph. The volleys coming from the other ship decrease suddenly in number, and Kris feels the giddy relief of a plan starting to work.

He looks back up at Katy who signals for right again, and then she is falling, gone, like a candle that someone has snuffed out.

“Katy?” Kris shouts, desperately. He wants to run to the lookout, but he can’t yet. “Right, _right_ ,” he calls and hears Adam’s echoing order.

His eyes keep pulling back to the empty place where Katy had been standing. The floor of the lookout is too high, hiding her from sight. He prays under his breath, the words pouring out of him as he spots a gun position on the ship that still seems functional, aims and shoots. The target drops and he hopes, with an unexpected, vicious thrill, that it was whoever got Katy.

The mercenary ship is tilting badly now; Kris can see lights going out and the shadows of things falling into the darkness below them. Scott hurries past, arms full of ammunition, and Kris stops him with a hand to his shoulder and says, “I’ll take those, go to the lookout, I think Katy’s been hit.” Scott goes white and heaps the ammo into Kris’s hands, then takes off at a run. Kris hurries to where Adam is still co-ordinating the guns, fierce satisfaction on his face as something on the enemy’s hull explodes, and drops the bullets at his feet where they glitter like treasure in the light of the flames.

“I think we’ve got them,” Adam says. “The fuckers will have to retreat or die.” He is streaked with soot and gunpowder and something that looks uncomfortably like blood, though it’s hard to tell, fire colouring everything slightly red.

He calls for the cannon and it booms out, making the whole deck shudder. Michael is methodically reloading as if everything were still and quiet and he didn’t have a vicious looking bruise developing on his forehead.

“I think they got Katy, she just dropped out of sight,” Kris says quietly, feeling sick to his stomach. He doesn’t dare even glance up at the lookout, just watches the ship turn slowly, still half ablaze.

“God _damn_ ,” Adam says and worries at his lip. The strange, red light is fading now, which Kris realises can only mean one thing.

“They’re retreating,” he says, softly and Adam looks stunned, frankly.

“We did it,” Adam says, almost disbelievingly, and then a little surer, louder, “We did it.”

He moves his gaze past Kris, up to the lookout and turns Kris by the shoulders. Scott has Katy. She’s being carried but Kris can see her head is upright and her hands are making ‘put me down’ motions. He looks at Adam and sees his smile reflected back, wide and unstoppable.

Scott carries Katy up to them and she frowns at them, slightly wide-eyed, and says, “I could walk.”

“Not you as well,” Kris says, overwhelmed by just how lucky they’ve been. “If you say you’re only bleeding slightly I will be, oh, only slightly put out.”

“Oh no, I’m bleeding spectacularly,” Katy says, and she lifts up her hand from her side. It’s covered in blood. “And I hit my head.”

“I’ll take her to her room and see what I can do,” Scott says. “She’ll be fine once we stop the bleeding.”

“Did we win?” Katy inquires. “I may have slightly blacked out.”

“We won,” Kris says and watches Scott take her carefully down the steps. He feels so relieved he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

“We won,” he repeats to Adam, and is half pulled, half falls into to Adam’s chest. It’s strange and so, so good just to lean, to not be strong for anyone, if only for a few seconds. The wool of Adam’s coat scratches at Kris’s cheek and everything becomes more solid, so Kris takes a breath and stands on his own two feet again. They look at each other for a long moment, until Adam clears his throat, almost self-conscious.

“Good work, Commander,” Kris says, and holds out his hand.

Adam shakes it firmly and says, “You too, Kris,” and Kris feels warm at that.

There are so many things to do, to check on. Katy, the prisoners, the ship. The drive linkage. Damn.

“And that is blood on you, too,” Kris says and Adam gives him a slightly puzzled look, then makes a unconcerned gesture.

“I’ll go see someone about it. You should go to Katy.”

“Engine room first,” Kris says, his body finally starting to wind down. Everything is losing that strange, pin sharp clarity and he is starting to ache. The engine room suddenly seems very far away. He sends Adam after Scott and Katy and takes a few moments to catch his breath for what seems like the first time in days. Then he straightens his shoulders and goes to be Captain Allen.

 

&&&&&

 

It’s pretty crowded in Katy’s room, which Scott seems to have set up as a temporary hospital. Katy is leaning on a pile of pillows, looking so pale it makes Kris shiver. She’s talking with Michael, their sentences meandering and wandering over each other’s. Adam is sitting cleaning his cuts in the corner. He gives Kris a concerned look as he crosses over to the bunk, and Kris tries to look comforting. Trust Adam to be anxious about the engine.

“We have to keep each other awake, after our head injuries,” Michael tells Kris solemnly as he sits on the edge of Katy’s bunk, the bruise on his forehead now accompanied by an impressive lump.

“Status report,” Katy demands, her face pinched with worry.

“She’s fine. No holes in the side or anything, relax, love. Lost some panelling. The stabiliser is going to need a lot of parts to fix; most of it is probably decorating a field somewhere. We think we can get the signalling back, if we can land and get at the hull. Overall, not as bad as I thought.”

“She’s a tough girl,” Katy says, with a light laugh that makes her flinch.

“Status report?” Kris asks her in turn, and she pulls the blanket down so that he can see the top of a thick bandage at her hip.

“Bullet in the hip,” she says matter-of-fact-ly. “Well, not any more. I was looking at you and then, wham, nothing.” She tips her head forward, revealing a cut running across the back of it. “Hit my head on something on the damn array.”

Kris sees her fall again behind his eyes and can’t breathe. “Kat,” he manages, and takes her hand.

“Don’t even consider feeling guilty,” Katy says sternly, squeezing his hand. “Although I know you will.”

“It’s my job,” Kris says, and hears the click of the door as Adam slips out of the room.

“We all know the risks, Captain,” Michael says, with that slow, warm smile of his.

A few minutes later Lil comes in through the door, dragging her chair behind her. She still looks far from normal, although she seems to have stopped bleeding, which is something.

“The Commander came to relieve me,” she says, putting the chair in the corner of the room and slumping down on it. “Well, I say relieve. I mean, he came and said that I was going to go get myself looked at, no arguments, before I fell over. He said the Captain…”

Lil trails off as she notices Kris, and tries a sunny smile on him, “Never mind. He’s not bad, for a prince,” she finishes, brightly.

Scott tuts over the cut on her shoulder, sponging away dried blood. “It’ll probably need stitches, which will have to wait until we can get you to a proper physician,” he tells her.

“Do what you can,” Kris instructs him, and then he has to smile as Matt slopes through the door looking suitably hang-dog.

“The Commander yelled until I went to him, then he practically ordered me to follow Lil here. He is rounding us up like _children_ ,” he says, petulantly.

“If you can’t be trusted to come and get medical treatment by yourself…” Katy teases.

Matt’s face is wiped clean of its sulky expression, and he limps over to the bed. Katy pats the bunk, saying, “Come, sit by me over here in the shooting survivors corner.”

Kris stands so that Matt can sit by Katy’s head and look down at her, his face still softened by relief.

“You look better than last time I saw you,” he says.

Katy nods. “I feel much better. I have it on good authority that I looked like a ghost.”

Michael rocks forwards in his chair. “It was scary. She was whiter than her pillow. Awful, Lil all cut up like that, and Matt here looking like death. Even the Prince is full of splinters.”

“Well, I couldn’t let them steal all the limelight,” Katy says, smiling at Michael.

“It was that damn thing,” Kris says, pointing at the bright yellow jacket that Katy still has draped round her shoulders. “You stood out like a sore thumb.”

He leans across and drops a kiss onto Katy’s head.

Then he takes a steadying breath. “Right, I suppose I’d better go see about these prisoners then.” The room goes a little stiller than it was before.

“Do you want me to come?” Matt asks. He sounds determined, but Michael is right, he does still look like death.

“No, you stay here, talk logistics and bullet dodging with Katy. Michael, if you’re up to it?” Even with a bashed in head Michael could easily stop a would-be escape in its tracks. Kris has seen him lift a cannon before.

“Raring to go, Captain,” Michael says, and they go to see how Adam is getting along with the mercenaries.

The corridor is shifting and juddering, a side effect of the broken stabiliser, but Adam is rolling easily with the movement, Upgrade aimed unwaveringly through the barred window of the brig.

“Captain,” he says when he sees Kris, tone clipped and formal.

“Commander,” Kris replies. “Any trouble?”

Adam’s smile and Upgrade both flash menacingly as he moves back from the door.

“Not so much,” he drawls.

Kris looks in through the grill. The prisoner who took on Lil is curled up on the floor cradling his arm, with a taller man - the one who Adam had picked up - leaning over him. The last mercenary is standing straight, looking right at Kris. He could be problematic.

Kris says, “I am Captain Allen. Why did you attack my ship?”

There is a sullen silence.

“I’ll only ask like this one more time.”

“We’re hurt,” the small man says. “We want some fucking medical supplies. Then we’ll think about talking.”

There is a brief glaring match between him and the standing man, which, to Kris’s surprise, the small, injured, seated man seems to win. Very interesting.

“You are prisoners aboard my ship. You attacked us without provocation, damaging my vessel and injuring my crew. I can’t imagine why you would think you are in any sort of position to bargain.”

“What you going to do, noble Fleet Captain?” the standing man sneers, and Kris hears two clicks from behind him as he readies his Acoustic and points it calmly through the bars.

“Try me,” he says.

The man who had been leaning on the wall gets up and slowly says, “We were ordered to attack you. There. Question answered.”

There is a flurry of whispering between the three prisoners. Adam taps Kris on the shoulder and they move to the side, the prisoners busy with their hushed argument.

“They’re scared, but they’re putting on a show,” Adam mutters.

Kris nods. “I think they’ll talk. The small one seems fairly smart and he’s obviously in a lot of pain, but he won’t want to look weak in front of the mouthy one. Some sort of power struggle there, I think.”

“Divide and conquer,” Adam says with relish, and his eyes go dark and dangerous. Kris shivers ever so slightly.

“Right, we’re taking you two at the back to get seen to by our doctor,” Kris says and puts the key in the lock of the door. There is a tumbling sound as the gears and bolts shift, and he lets Adam open the door and go in.

He’s never though all that much about it before, but Adam is imposing. He wears his height so well that most of the time it hardly seems noticeable, but now he’s moving differently, with purpose, and he seems to fill the whole brig.

The man on the floor gets up, biting his lip as his arm moves, and steps forward unsteadily. The other man follows him, moving very warily round Adam.

Michael shuts the door behind them and Kris glances over his shoulder to see that Michael already has his gun trained back on the man inside.

He shepherds the two prisoners round to a storeroom, nearly empty apart from a couple of barrels of water, and flicks a light on. He motions with his gun and the two prisoners sit down on the barrels, faces looking even more drawn under the gaslight.

“You seem like reasonable men,” Kris says. “For pirates, anyway. You must know I have absolutely no obligation to even keep you alive. I could drop you overboard right now and probably get a medal for it. But if you tell me what you know, I will take you to the nearest prison.”

“Prison is our best deal?” asks the taller man. Adam clears his throat and it’s like a searchlight, you can’t help but focus on him.

“You should count yourselves lucky, gentlemen. A life of crime does not pay,” he says, each word perfectly enunciated. “So I would consider doing what the Captain asks.”

Kris says, “Prison and analgesics. Best deal. Final deal.”

The mercenaries exchange a look, and Kris can see them take in the bruises and the broken arm and come to a decision.

“What, exactly, do you want to know? We make no fucking promises that we can answer everything,” says the smaller one - the swearier one, in Kris’s head - and Kris has to fight a smile. From what he knows, most mercenaries are just petty thugs and thieves, so he’d expected them to crack pretty easily, but he’s still damn happy about how this is going.

“Who ordered you to attack our ship? And don’t say your captain,” he warns.

The small man gives his partner a pointed look, “Yeah, now is not the time to be a smart arse, _Robert_ ,” he growls. The taller one, Robert, gives him an irritated glance and then looks back at Kris.

“I don’t know exactly, but word on the ship was that it was some political thing. Someone from the Mansion.”

“Who? Any names? Description?” Adam asks, a harsh note in his voice, which Kris understands completely. This is exactly as bad as he’d feared.

“Dunno, but they paid us well enough, and they weren’t usual clients,” Robert says. He looks at the other prisoner, “Captain say any more to you?”

“Some fucking poncy foreign sounding thing. Wasn’t a name, exactly,” the man says,and Kris waits for him to say ‘Gokey’.

“Le.. Recar?” the mercenary finishes, unsure.

Adam takes a step forward and asks, “Le Renard?”

“That’s the one,” the man answers and looks hopefully at Kris. “Can I get something for my arm now?”

“Not yet,” Adam snaps. “Are you sure about this?”

“Well, yeah. I wasn’t supposed to know but the Captain, he was so fucking happy about the money we were getting and how his contact had told him we were working for this Le Renard, from the Mansion. He thought the whole thing was fucking hilarious. Hypocrites, just as dirty as us, he said.”

Kris looks at Adam, who has gone pale, the marks from the splinters standing out against his skin. Kris has no idea who this ‘Le Renard’ is, but it can’t be good news if Adam is letting this much show on his face.

“How did you get past the gun towers at Knavesmire?” Adam asks, tension wound into every word. Kris looks at him pointedly; he doesn’t need another strangling incident right now, not when they seem to be getting answers.

“We just flew right past them.” Robert smirks, and then jumps out of his smile when Adam makes an exasperated noise in his throat.

“We had information,” the other man says quickly. “The people who paid us said we wouldn’t have any trouble, and we didn’t. Not a fucking peep from either of them.”

That would take a serious amount of planning, money and influence to pull off. It’s like every answer they get is just the start of another trail of questions, and Kris just wants out.

“What were you being paid to do?” he asks the prisoners.

“We were to find the Conway. They gave us co-ordinates. And then we were to take the ship down, and everyone in it. Anything goes, as long as there’s nothing left.”

Kris feels the anger boil up and he’s stepping forward before he knows what he’s doing. He takes a very, very deep breath and says, “Is that right?”

“Yes. Apparently the instructions were very specific on that matter,” the small man says and gives Kris what is probably meant to be an apologetic look. “The Captain felt kinda off about that.”

“Oh good, mercenaries with a conscience,” Adam scoffs.

“Did they say _why_ my ship was to be completely destroyed?” Kris asks, but they both shake their heads. The words come back at him like a blow, _completely destroyed_. The room upstairs, now filled with his brilliant crew all making jokes and making light of their injuries, could have be so much wreckage, and the crew themselves…

He takes a few more deep breaths. There’s no need to add to the crushing tension of this room. They’re all already battle-worn and injured, and it’s hurting them, Kris can see it on all three faces as he looks round the room.

“We don’t know anything else, I swear,” the small man offers, shifting gingerly. He looks like he’s about to keel over. Kris doesn’t actually want them to die, now that the anger has settled down into a slow burn in his stomach. There’s already been too much of that tonight.

“There’s nothing more useful you can tell us, is there,” Kris states.

The prisoners both shake their heads. They don’t look like they could lie right now, even if they tried.

“Right, back to the brig. I’ll send down some analgesics and something to tie that arm up with,” Kris says. Adam gives him a frustrated look.

Kris shrugs and gets the two prisoner back into the brig as quickly as possible.

As soon as the door closes, Adam whips round and hisses, “What were you thinking? We should have kept at them until we got some better answers.”

Kris pulls Adam round the corner, away from Michael. He tries to keep his voice level. “I don’t believe in torture, Adam. They’re no threat to us right now; there was no point in keeping them there. It wasn’t doing any of us any good.”

“We can’t afford to be soft. Do you know how serious this is?”

“Do you?” Kris snaps back, because he knows Adam is angry but he does not appreciate Adam using his looming trick against him, trapping Kris against the wall. “This ship is my whole damn world, do you think I would risk it for some mercenaries? They didn’t know anything else. We got plenty lucky as it is. Now _let me past_.”

Adam steps back. “Sorry,” he says, voice still conflicted, not quite tamed. “It’s just… Le Renard. This is not what I thought. Shit.” He runs his hand through his hair.

“I think,” Kris says carefully as he can, “that you and I had better sit down and talk. Because I am feeling two steps behind here, and I have enough on my plate as it is. We need to be on the same page.”

“We certainly work better together,” Adam says with a conciliatory smile. “I need to go sort out my Upgrade first.”

He raises his arm, his weapon; it’s covered in soot and splinters. “The last thing that I need is this jamming,” he says, not looking up from it, not meeting Kris’s eye before he leaves. Kris drifts back to Micheal, fighting down the rising urge to hit something, which leaves him just standing there, useless.

“I think maybe someone should check on Anoop,” Michael suggests, which is remarkably tactful of him.

Kris drops into Katy’s room on the way to the Bridge. Matt is fast asleep, lolling against the wall at the foot of Katy’s bunk. Lil has a partly shattered telescope spread out over the rest of it and she and Katy are talking quietly as they try to put it back together.

“When someone, anyone, has a minute, take Meg something hot to drink, will you?” Kris says, then considers his wording and adds, “Not you, Kat. Stay in that bed. I mean it.”

Katy just pulls a face at him. Lil promises that she will head down later, and then turns back to their repair job.

Everything is still at a slightly alarming angle, and when Kris makes it back up onto deck, it’s like seeing his girl get hurt all over again, her metal scorched and gouged, debris everywhere. There is glass all over the steps to the Bridge, but inside things are not too different from normal, apart from the occasional bucking of the controls under Anoop’s hands.

“How are you doing?” Kris asks.

Anoop looks at him a little wistfully. “Okay, but I do miss my messages from Meg. I don’t like not knowing how she’s doing. With the engine, that is.”

Anoop reaches for one of the levers but misses. He rubs a hand across his eyes, and Kris remembers that Anoop wasn’t even supposed to be on shift. He must have been awake for about 18 hours now.

“You go get some rest, I’ll take her from here,” Kris tells him, feeling rather guilty at having left him up here on his own for so long.

Anoop looks at him blankly for a few moments, as if he can’t imagine a world outside of the Bridge. Then his hand eases off the control by inches, making way for Kris to take charge.

As Anoop goes to leave, Kris says, “That was some fairly stellar flying earlier, by the way.”

“Just doing my job,” Anoop says, looking pleased nonetheless.

He and Adam meet just outside the doorway, and Adam claps him on the back. Anoop says something that makes Adam’s face light up and then disappears down the steps.

“Le Renard,” Kris says, and winces as he eases down the engine with the pull of a lever. He suspects that he’s wrenched his wrist somehow, on top of everything. “Who is it? Is it even a person?”

“It’s like something out of one of those sensational novellas,” Adam says, with a half-hearted attempt at lightness, crunching over broken glass as he comes closer. “It’s an organised group of ministers that no one is really supposed to know exists. They’re a powerful faction at Court. All very shady cabal, power behind the throne type of thing. Everyone knows about it, but no one talks about it.”

“I feel a headache coming on,” Kris says. This is the type of thing that makes him glad studiously he avoids politics, and also makes him wish he paid more attention. Then he wouldn’t feel so bloody stupid.

“I know it’s rather difficult to believe, but they do exist. I mean, I’ve never actually seen proper evidence, only the results. Things that could only have happened if there was such a group. And rumours, of course, it being the Court.” Adam instantly loses his natural, easy stance when he talks about the Mansion and the Court, and it’s almost painful to watch.

“Oh, and the best bit? Apparently, Minister Murdoch is, if not the head of it, then very high up. Minister Murdoch, my father’s closest advisor.” He looks up at Kris. “I can certainly see it, can’t you?”

“I may not know everything about politics, but if I learnt one thing from reading 1001 Cydonian Nights, it’s Never Trust The Grand Vizier,” Kris says and Adam laughs, bitter-edged. Kris wonders how all these new puzzle pieces fit together, now that they’re not trying to make the picture they had thought they were.

“He’s never liked me, that’s for certain. Not what he wanted in a potential Idol according to his crazy, old-man standards. And of course Daniel bloody Gokey would agree with him. God, I should have known he wasn’t smart enough to pull all this off by himself.”

“So which came first?” Kris asks, and Adam gives him a confused look.

“Who got who involved? Did Le Renard get Gokey to go along with their plans, or did he recruit them?”

Adam’s face shifts again, and Kris knows that look. It’s a horrible, desolate thing, and it never means anything good.

“Daniel could have gone to them, got them to help him. Just so that he could be the next Idol, next in line. It’s all he’s ever cared about. At Neil’s funeral he said, right to my face, that I should view this as an opportunity. Like I should be glad that Neil was…” Adam exhales, shakily, slumping down at the table. He gets out a cloth some gears from a pocket and starts to clean them, resolutely focused on the job.

Kris gives him a moment then says, “I don’t mean to. To presume. But, do you think that it’s possible that you are bringing in a lot of other issues into this? With all that’s passed between you.”

Kris feels disorientated, like he’s just flown unexpectedly into a cloud. He isn’t sure how to talk about what Adam said in the engine room, or even if he should at all. Adam remains someone who Kris is still trying to piece together, too many parts still unknown. Never mind the fact that Adam talked a lot about love and other men, which are subject areas that Kris has spent most of his life diligently avoiding thinking about.

“That’s unfair,” Adam protests,but the set of his mouth moves into uncertainty. “It’s possible that Daniel set this up. He’d think he was doing the right thing, deposing the feckless, reckless Prince Adam.”

“I see that, but would he actually want you _dead_?” Kris presses, and Adam makes a resigned movement, all breath and shoulders.

“Fine, maybe not dead. What difference does it make, anyway? Either way, he’s in on it. He had Allie kidnapped, for god’s sake, and then had the gall to lie about it, flat out, to everyone,” Adam says, building up into a teeth-clenched seethe.

“It does make a difference,” Kris insists, “because if he’s being controlled by Le Renard, we might be able to come to some sort of agreement with him without having to resort to something drastic to get the right person on the throne. That’s you, by the way,” he clarifies with a smile, just in case.

Adam gives Kris a look somewhere between shocked and charmed. “Your confidence in me is… well… let’s call it surprising.”

“Why should it be?” Kris asks at the same time as Adam says, “Not unwelcome, though.”

“Let’s just say there are probably a good few people in Court who would not share it,” Adam explains. “In fact, there are a good few who will be very firmly in agreement with Gokey. And Le Renard, it seems.”

Kris notices that Adam hasn’t touched the parts on the table for a while. He’s just been sitting there, threading the cloth through his fingers, and Kris knows that he’s not seeing the wall he’s staring at.

“Maybe it’s not about you. Not really. Maybe they want Gokey to be the Idol because that way they get to control him. That way they get to really be the power behind the throne,” Kris says slowly, another puzzle piece slotting into place. He looks at Adam, who is sitting bolt upright now, and adds, “I mean, they wouldn’t have had a chance with you.”

“Not nowadays,” Adam grants him. “Hell, maybe if I’d stayed uninterested in everything apart from the good life all this could have been avoided.” Kris rather wants to yell at Adam for the stupid half-guilty look that crosses his face. He can’t have it both ways, feel at fault for his past _and_ for giving it up.

He settles for saying, “Don’t be an idiot. This was always coming, by the sounds of things. We need to focus on the here and now, work out who are enemies are and who our allies are. My training officer always said attack is the best form of defence. We need a plan of attack, and now.”

“So who can we trust, then? In the Fleet, who would you say isn’t involved?” Adam asks.

“Captain Cook of the Anthemic,” Kris says instantly. “There’s no way David’d get involved in anything as underhanded and traitorous as a coup. He’s just not the type.”

“You seem very sure,” Adam says, almost suspicious.

“We served together for a little while, before he got promoted. He’s a decent man. Besides, he has Archie to keep him on the straight and narrow.” When Adam looks like he’s not getting the joke Kris adds, “That’s his second in command, not a bad bone in his body,”

“Anyone else?”

Kris considers for a second. “Captain Clarkson. Good Southern girls don’t double cross people. And Major Dioguardi, she wouldn’t go along with any plotting.”

“And she likes me, so I don’t think that she would go against me,” Adam agrees. “I think she has a soft spot for people who have, how did Matt put it? An insubordinate streak a mile wide.”

“We should write all this down,” Kris suggests. He manages to get them steady at altitude, then realises that he’s not even thought about their current position.

Kris swears for a good while then says, “There’s always another bridge to count, right?” He locks the controls, sits down opposite Adam and gets the charts out.

Adam steals a piece of paper and writes “Good Guys” at the top of it. He puts ‘Captain Kristopher’ at the top. Kris adds ‘Allen’ to the end and Adam’s name underneath because apparently this is what they’re doing now.

“You should really ask Katy about names, you know,” Kris says. “I tend to focus on my own crew more than other people.”

Adam gives him a ‘Colour me unsurprised’ look. “What about Minister Cowell? He told you to come for me. Do you think he… that he knew they were sending mercenaries after us?”

“It’s hard to tell with him, honestly. I don’t think so.”

“So, that’s Minister Cowell on the ‘Possibly Evil, Definitely Inscrutable’ List then,” Adam says, shaking his head. “What a fun game this is. Let’s play ‘Who wants us dead?’”

“I think if Minister Cowell wanted me dead, we wouldn’t be talking right now. And if he wanted you dead, he wouldn’t hire mercenaries to shoot down a valuable ship. Not his style.”

“So what you’re saying is, we know he doesn’t want us dead because we are not, in fact, dead?” Adam saysand Kris nods.

“Well, that’s comforting. Here, let me at that list. I can think of a few Ministers I can trust. Less than I would like, but still, a list-worthy number.” Adam comes round to pull up a chair next to Kris, leaning over to take the piece of paper.

“You and Katy can cross reference,” Kris says, but his laugh comes out hollow.

He marks their position on the map and makes some calculations.

“We’re a good few miles from anywhere we could stop, but with some in-flight patches we could probably make it to Les Navettes for repairs,” he says, tracing their route so that Adam can follow it.

Adam’s smile finally sparks a light in his eyes. “I’ve heard about that place. It’s supposed to be quite a sight. The biggest fully automated Airship port in the world,” he sighs, sounding quite in love already.

Kris retreats back behind the controls, distancing himself a little from Adam and his blissful sighing. He says, “We should be safe there. It’s big enough that no one should be able to try anything, and it’s not run by the military, so even if we are somehow enemies of the state, they can’t take us prisoner or anything.” It’s something that he’d never thought he’d have to contemplate, one more to add to the many that have somehow become part of his life.

And then, because he can’t resist, Kris adds, “And yes, it’s incredible. The whole thing is made of metal, you know, and they have ships come in from all over the world.”

Adam shakes his head. “You know, Captain, we aren’t much good at maintaining a serious conversation.”

“I blame the shock,” Kris says seriously, but he wants to laugh too. Being with Adam is like opening a pressure valve. He feels oddly safe now, the Bridge a cocoon of warmth and light in the darkness of an unlit ship. His ship is flying under his command, and Adam is there, sitting at the table safe and whole, smile unfurling like a victory banner.

&&&&&

The next few days all merge into one, just an morass of endless repairs, days and nights indistinguishable from each other. They all stumble around, snatching food when they can get it. Kris catches sleep and exhausted conversations with Adam in the precious quiet of their cabin.

Kris can only truly remember a few clear moments, like photographs in amongst a line of watercolours - Matt throwing Katy's yellow jacket to the wind set against the sound of her laughter; the large hole just to the side of the main conversion pipe, millimetres away from a fatal explosion; and dark hair on white cotton, from the night he had lain for half an hour before falling asleep watching the turn of Adam's head on his pillow, too tired to stop himself.

Today he looks for - and finds - Adam in the engine room with Meg giving him orders, queen of her own domain. She and Adam are sitting on the floor with the deconstructed signal ordinator all around them. Kris starts to go over but Adam, without looking up from the parts in his hands, says, “Careful. She's threatened me with a blowtorch if I damage the ordinator. I'd maintain a safe distance, if I were you.”

"It's delicate and you are rusty at handling parts," Meg says. "Too much time spent as a military man," she adds with a disapproving sniff that makes her feelings about Adam's career choice very clear.

"I have nothing to say about this. Nothing,” Kris tells her. "I just wanted to let you know that we're nearing the Chantier Naval."

Meg and Adam turn to look at him, wide eyed. They both have grease marks on their noses.

"Already?" Adam asks. "But..."

"It's Wednesday." He sees the shock register. "I know. Well, I don't know, but it is. I haven't spoken to you since Monday," Kris says with a shake of his head. It had been a surprise for him, too.

"You share a room, how is this possible?" Meg asks.

"Oh, like you knew it was Wednesday," Adam scoffs.

Meg looks at the complex machinery in her hands and Adam gives Kris a victorious smile. “Wednesday has come as a shock to us all, clearly. Which probably means we’re all mad.”

Kris shrugs, saying, "We're all shocked and all mad, but we're flying because of it." It's something to hang onto at the moment - they're flying, every day they're still flying, everyone is still alive. Kris has been a military man long enough to know that sometimes you have to take the victories where you find them.

“The Chantier Naval is unbelievable. Really, you won't believe it. It's like a huge tree only better because it's completely mechanical.” Meg says. She puts the part carefully on the floor, running her hand over it like a pet that needs soothing.

“Meg doesn’t have much time for the beauty of nature.” Kris says with a grin.

Meg stands up, wiping her hands on her skirt. “They don’t have automated landing winches in nature.”

“The lady has a point” Adam says, letting Meg take some complicated looking arrangement of gears from his hands and place it down on the floor as well.

“I usually do.”

Kris decides he's not going to mention the grease on her nose, because it’s kind of sweet and besides, it makes it less intimidating to step closer to the precious parts on the floor.

“Right then, are you coming to see this marvel or not?” he asks, holding out a hand to Meg who takes it, using him to steady herself as she tiptoes between the parts. It reminds Kris of the way Meg is with her son, smiling and careful, so careful. There's only her, now, to support him. Kris always feels a knot in his stomach when he remembers that, guilt and pride and determination to do right by them all tangled up and pulling at his insides for a second.

Adam laughs, picking his way across the floor to Kris with exaggerated care. "Try and stop us."

They arrive on the deck to meet Matt coming down from the Bridge. “Anoop told me I couldn’t land us with only one arm,” Matt sulks. “I wanted to prove him wrong.”

“Did it go well?” Adam asks. He still looks a little guilty every time he sees the sling on Matt’s arm. As if that bullet had been his fault at all. Kris has tried explaining this, but Adam tends to just mutter darkly about people in glass houses.

“Not exactly,” Matt admits, “as you can see. I’ve never landed on anything like that, it’s not fair. Stupid Anoop. Stupid arm.”

“Yes, yes, very sad, but the Chantier Naval,” Adam says, drawing his voice out into a whine. All that’s missing is the foot stamp and he’s Kris aged five, wanting to go climb trees. Kris’s mother always said he was happier off the ground than on it.

Kris reaches out and turns Adam round by the shoulders. “Voila,” he says, a little smug. He hears Adam's intake of breath and looks up to catch the end of a wide, wonderful smile.

They all just stare out at the structure growing out of the horizon. It’s still an impossible view to Kris, something out of the dreams of a madman, or a genius. Or Meg.

“Come up here, it’s incredible,” a voice calls down from the lookout, and there is Lil, sitting happily on a fold-out chair.

They troop up the stairs and Kris says, “I distinctly remember giving you the lecture about rest and being off duty. Actually, I remember giving it to a few people standing here.”

Matt at least looks a little embarrassed, but Lil leans back in her chair contently. “I’m just here enjoying the view, Captain. Nothing wrong with that.”

“Mad but flying, remember,” Adam says, right into Kris’s ear, breath ghosting warm over his neck.

Kris looks resolutely ahead. “I think, on this occasion, just mad.”

Matt shades his eyes against the sun with his hand, never taking them off the horizon. “One day we’ll come here as tourists and spend our money on frivolities, not critical systems.”

Adam says, “You can bring the children, Lil, have a holiday. You said you wanted to take them somewhere exciting.”

Kris wonders, not for the first time, if Adam’s ability to learn about people’s lives and to connect with them is a product of years of training as a member of the Royal Family, or if it is just part of Adam’s nature. Something fundamentally good in him that people respond to.

“A proper holiday,” Lil muses. "Now that would be something. I'm sure they'd love it here." Her fond smile curves up to meet the harsh line of the cut running down her cheek. It makes Kris wince.

"Who wouldn't ? There are tea rooms on the decks and you can watch the ships come and go from them," Meg says dreamily. "And shops full to bursting with parts."

Adam and Matt sigh in tandem and then laugh at each other.

"You are really little boys at heart, aren't you," Kris says, with a shake of his head and a stupid flip of his stomach. Bringing people here, to one of his favourite places in the Kingdom, it's a treat - a real silver lining in an unusually heavy cloud.

"Don't you even pretend, I saw your eyes light up," Adam says. "It's okay to be happy about this, you know."

Kris relents a little, "Oh, fine then. And it’ll be good get our girl back on her feet. It's been a tough few days."

“There’s not far to go now, around half an hour's flying,” Lil tells them nonchalantly, like those kinds of calculations are easy. She pats the railing. "Now far now, darling."

Kris says, “Matt, take the deck. Adam, we need to go get ready, then,” and Adam snaps to attention.

“What’s the plan?”

“Well, we are all going to go put on our best dress uniforms, and then you and I are going to fob off our prisoners onto some poor unfortunate, using your regal authority.”

“Sounds like fun,” Adam says with a slight smirk. “I do so enjoy getting to use my regal authority.”

“And your dress uniform,” Lil adds, leaning across to bump Adam in the leg with her shoulder.

“That too,” Adam allows.

&&&&&

Kris hasn’t worn his formal Fleet jacket for some time, as evidenced by the amount of digging he has to do to find it in his trunk. He smooths his hands over the blue wool, remembering Allie polishing the buttons with her napkin at the Ambassador’s Dinner that he had been late to and unprepared for. He wonders if she wrote to Adam about it.

There’s technically a formal shirt that should go underneath it, but it’s starched too stiff and the collar is viciously tight, so Kris just slips the jacket over his normal, comfortable flannel.

“Done and done,” he says, turning back around. Adam is still buttoning his shirt, pale cotton over paler skin over well-defined muscle. Adam has freckles _everywhere_ , Kris notices, before Adam pulls his shirt together, crossing his arms defensively.

“That was quick,” Adam says, eyes sliding away from Kris. He attempts some sort of contortionist manoeuvre to try and button his collar with one hand while keeping his arms folded. Kris sighs and looks down at his buttons. If Adam is going to be embarrassed - unnecessarily so in Kris’s opinion - about being partially undressed, then Kris can turn his attention elsewhere.

“Did Allie ever tell you about the Ambassador’s Dinner?”

“Hmm, perhaps. Oh yes, something about terrible shrimp and having to… Oh. Having to clean a Captain’s buttons with her napkin. You, I suppose.”

Kris says, “In my defence, things had exploded. Important things.”

Adam snorts with laughter, wonderfully undignified and says, “I like the blue jacket, by the way. Very symbolic.” Kris takes it that this means they are allowed to look at each other again. Adam is giving him a very considering, slightly unnerving, once over.

“Blue for the sky, for liberty, the possibility of the never-ending horizon,” Kris recites. Adam, if possible, stares even harder.

“Are my buttons dirty?” Kris asks, because Adam is making him feel all kinds of self conscious.

Adam frowns and shakes his head like he’s trying to clear it. “No, no, it’s… Blue for the sky and? Where did that come from?”

“It’s a Fleet thing. You know, they make you recite it at your passing out ceremony, and put it on the silverware. That kind of a business. I like it, though.”

Adam pulls on his own jacket, black like the one he was wearing that first night, what seems like a year ago. “I think our jackets are black so as not to show the blood. Far less poetic.” He wears it well though, as striking here, lit by sunshine, as he was in shadows and gaslight.

“Well, you should write something. When you're Idol you can implement a blanket poetry policy for all public services," Kris says. He likes to think that if he mentions his future enough Adam will stop freezing up every time it comes up in conversation.

"If, not when," Adam says, a little stilted, but at least he's talking. "One step at a time, Captain Allen."

They make their way to the brig,and it's still tough going through some of the corridors, the Conway listing under them unexpectedly. Kris puts a hand out without thinking and slides it soothingly down the wall, then looks at Adam, feeling caught out and prickly, again. Adam doesn't laugh, though, he looks understanding and rakishly charming in that damn jacket. Kris walks a little faster. Today is going to require his exhausted brain to be completely on the task at hand. He needs every bit of focus that he call muster, no distractions.

Michael moves out from his guard position and Kris peers into the brig, the prisoners only just visible in the windowless room.

"Okay, I need you all to put your hands where I can see them," he says, drawing his Acoustic. The prisoners step forwards, hands clearly raised. "We have weapons on you, so don't try anything." Adam says, and turns the lock. The three men huddle together a little in the light coming in from the open door, looking sullen and pale.

The smallest pirate, and doesn't it feel good not to be the shortest man in the room for once, is bundled in a suspiciously familiar coat. Kris raises his eyebrows and Adam's expression doesn't change all that much, but his eyes go a little wide and very caught out. "He was getting sick," Adam says defensively, giving Kris a very pointed look. "And someone kept going on about how we weren't to let them die or suffer..."

"I wasn't that sick," the man says. He and Adam both fix Kris with grouchy, defiant scowls.

"Fine, fine," Kris says. "If you want to take it back now, Adam. Unless you are willing to let him keep it?"

"God, no," Adam says, with a face like Kris has suggested throwing someone off the side of the ship. "Do you know what they do to clothes like this in prison?" He takes the jacket and runs his hand over the wool lovingly. Kris finds himself sharing a smile with two pirates, which is unexpected and disconcerting, but he is in some strange, impenetrable place beyond actual shock these days.

Kris nods at Michael, who snaps cuffs onto the three prisoners, quick and efficient. Kris is so grateful for the more stable elements of his crew some days, although he would never, could never play favourites. He's got a little brother, he knows better than that. The prisoners troop out into the corridor, looking even paler under the gaslight. It'll be a relief when they're someone else's responsibility.

The way back up to deck takes them through parts of the ship that have been untouched by the battle and the madness of repairs, and Kris is pleased for that, somehow. That these men will never know how close they were to their goal, never see the damage they wrought within Kris's ship. They hear the jarring screech of metal on metal, and the Conway has a full ship shudder. Michael's mouth crooks a little in concern, but he waves the prisoners up onto deck with easy confidence.

Adam follows them up the stairs, his arm unrecognisable under turning cogs, now not a part of him but a weapon, ready to fire at any moment. Kris almost runs up the steps, but on deck everything is the ordinary madness of docking, people shouting and swearing and throwing each other ropes. The branches of the Chantier Naval are closed in over them, the noise from other ships coming from all around. The intrusion of the outside world after so much time skyside is jarring, but not entirely unwelcome. Kris loves to get lost in the landless bubble of flying, but it's good for everyone, himself included, to get to ground.

Adam turns back as Kris steps out of the stairwell.

"For this, I can almost forgive those bastards," he says and gives Kris one of his best grins, wide and open and a little wicked.

The noise dies down and Kris realises that the crew have stopped, to a man,and are looking at the knot of prisoners gathered in the middle of the deck. They have grouped in tightly, all bravado and concerned looks at each other. Kris remembers the snippy, mean tension between the tall man and the one who Adam had lent his coat to, as he watches them move into a position that couldn't say more clearly, "I have your back."

"Right," Kris says, to swing the attention onto himself instead. "Michael, you're with me. Matt, you know Katy is in charge but I'm trusting you to see that it's from the safety of a chair. Everyone welse? I'd prefer it if you stayed on board until we figure out the lie of the land. Spread the word. The less we have to deal with the damn authorities the better."

There is a minor outbreak of smirking both from and at the pirates in their midst. "Understood, Captain," Matt responds with a businesslike nod.

Kris checks the prisoners' cuffs one more time.

He steps back and looks over the three men. "We're taking you to the prison here. If you try and escape, we will shoot you. So. Don't."

There is a pause. Kris raises his voice. "Are we clear?"

"Crystal," the tall pirate calls. Michael and Adam share a frustrated look and both stand up a little straighter in a stance that Kris recognises as two steps away from a fight.

Kris resists the urge to roll his eyes. Some days, he swears to God, he could be his brother, at home in Arkansay with a class of recalcitrant pupils. "Glad to hear it. Micheal, you take rear guard. Adam - point. I'll lead."

They proceed out of the gate and onto a metal gangway that leads onto a large wooden platform. Kris threads his way through stalls, over bridges and between docked ships. Some of the branches are huge, shops on all sides, while others are thin and precarious feeling, gratings over nothing but air and a very long fall. The whole place smells like oil and a hundred types of food and Kris feels, as he always does here, like he’s been dropped into another world.

When Kris looks back, Adam's face keep flickering into incredulous glee until he remembers himself and sets his expression flat and stern again. The constant contrast is sort of mesmerising.

The soldiers on duty outside the military wing of the Chantier snap to attention as soon as they see Kris and the group. More when they spot Kris and Adam's uniforms and rank insignias.

"Do your thing," he mutters to Adam as they get nearer,and Adam straightens his spine and fixes the two guards with a 'cower, mortals,' stare. They only wilt a little, to their credit.

"I am Prince Adam, Heir Apparent, and this is Captain Allen of the Airship Conway. We have prisoners to turn over to your commanding officer."

Kris glances at Michael, the very model of stoic intent, and lets his gaze flick over the two guards, who have-shock wide eyes.

"Your highness," the guard on the left stumbles out, and they both salute absolutely perfectly. "Your highness, Captain, if you would like to follow me."

The military base is built into what would be the trunk if the Chantier was a real tree, gangways and bridges becoming long gaslit corridors that curve round in ever-decreasing circles. The prisoners look paler with every step into the artificial light, keeping a suspicious eye out on all sides, as if they might be ambushed at any moment. Their soldiers leave them in a wide entrance hall with a huge metal door at one end. Kris is looking forward to seeing how it opens, so it's rather an anticlimax when a small, ordinary door to one side of it opens and a harried looking man strides out, hair sticking every which way as if he has just run his hand through it.

"Captain Lewisham, Commander of the Naval prison,” the man asks, brisk and businesslike. “And you are?"

Adam steps forward and stands by Kris. "These are mercenaries captured when they boarded the Fleet ship Conway. We are turning them over to your custody."

The man gives the huddle of skypirates a perfunctory glance. "On whose authority?" he asks Adam.

Adam says, "Mine, as Heir Apparent of this Kingdom. The second highest authority possible."

"Huh," the man says. He does not look in any way impressed or awed or anything else that he should be. That Kris was expecting him to be. Adam says, slightly more loudly, "So if you would take these men into custody."

"The thing is..." Captain Lewisham makes a considering face, "Sire? We've had no official confirmation of your status,and the general consensus is that Lord Gokey is the current Heir Apparent. So you don't really have the authority to make me fulfill your request."

Adam flinches. It's a slight movement, but Kris sees it all the same.

"I am still a Prince of the realm," Adam spits out. " And so you should still obey."

The Captain pushes his hand through his hair. "Look. I'm not getting on the wrong side of anyone by putting 'By the order of Prince Adam' on the paperwork. I like my job and I'm not risking it for you." Kris can see it's a fair position to take, in a detached way, but that doesn’t stop him from being angry. This was not how this was supposed to be. He needs rid of these prisoners, and he needs people not to stun Adam into silence. It's unsettling to say the least.

Time for the back-up plan. If they’d made a back-up plan. But Kris has a plan which usually works, and Adam still looks like he's in shock. Or possibly having a rage-induced blackout. Kris moves closer to the Captain, who raises his eyebrows.

"Captain... Lewisham was it?" It's childish, but if the man's going to put a questioning lilt on "Sire," he deserves it. "Firstly, thank you for apprising us of the political situation. As I'm sure you'll appreciate, it's hard to keep track of such things while skyside." Kris smiles his very politest smile.

"Whatever the situation regarding his highness might be, I remain a Captain of the Fleet. Which means that my rank is equal to yours, and my authority unimpugnable. Do feel free to put that on the paperwork."

Captain Lewisham blinks. Kris can see that he wants to argue, but that is the joy of this plan. Arguing with measured reason is nigh on impossible.

Kris sets his smile to icy concern. "And we've handed over these prisoners to you now. I would so hate for you to get into any sort of trouble for refusing to keep known pirates locked up, where they can't attack any other ships."

There is a moment and then Kris sees it - surrender in the man's eyes, clear as if he’d just ran up a white flag.

"I'm sure that whatever the political circumstances, no one will be anything but pleased that these men, these _mercenaries_ , are locked up," Kris finishes smoothly, pressing home the advantage.

"Fine," Captain Lewisham says. "You're signing for them, though."

"Naturally," Kris agrees.

The Captain calls for his Sargent and there is a flurry of activity, men pouring into the room from the other door and from outside, orders being shouted in strident tones, a thousand and one forms to sign. It's like a perfect storm of everything Kris hates about the military. Adam stands in the middle of it all, a blank wall of shocked silence.

This most un-Adamlike behaviour continues - as they hand over the prisoners, as they leave the Military wing, as they make their way back - until Kris can take no more. He stops on a wooden platform that's set out like a hanging garden and asks, "Are you alright?"

"I don't think I've ever seen anyone use politeness as a weapon before," Adam says. In his black jacket he looks confused and out of place against the pale fencing and flower boxes full of reds and yellows.

Michael grins. "Oldest trick in the Captain's book. Well, I heard tales about him and Matt and their charming smile campaigns as Ensigns, but I've never seen the politeness thing fail."

Adam grins and suddenly he's laughing, buttons flashing bright gold among the colours that surround him; the world realigning and Adam slotting into place. He says, "Of course. I should have expected something like that from the good Captain. You just... You polited him into submission."

"I think you'll find it's a mix of polite, concerned and officious. We're very law abiding here on the Conway."

Adam looks considering. Kris shakes his head and says, "Oh no you don't. You have enough in your arsenal already. Not all of us can be dashing Princes of the realm."

When they reach the Conway, Adam saunters up the gangplank and holds the gate open for Kris and Michael. "Please, after you. I would hate for you to get stuck and fall horribly to your deaths," he says, nothing but serious and even toned throughout.

"Needs work," Michael tells him.

Practically the whole crew is still on the deck, trying hard to look busy. Anoop is ostentatiously polishing what appears to be a coal scuttle.

"It's fine. No quick getaways required," Kris says, letting his voice carry. He can almost feel the exhale of breath. "And so I want everyone to get to the medical wing as soon as feasibly possible. Yes, everyone," he adds firmly. Adam closes his mouth again.

Meg gives Kris an appraising look. "And then can I go parts shopping?" she says, eyes wide and hopeful in that 'slightly crazed deer' look that Kris both loves and fears.

"Yes, Meg. Then we go shopping. For things we _need_ only."

"You say that now..." Matt says, with an eye roll and a half smile. Kris knows he spoils the Conway, can't stop himself, buys the most high-end parts they have in the workshop or yard, always looking for improvements. They're a team, he's always telling the crew, so he has to put his money where his mouth is.

"Do you want to come or not?" he asks, because as much as Matt likes to tease, he can be as hopeless as Kris is when it comes to their girl.

Matt grins, all knowing innocence, the kind of grin that had got him - and half the time Kris - into many flavours of trouble when they'd been midshipmen. "Of course."

He heads to the top of the stairs and yells, "Bring forth the invalids!"

"One of these days, Katy is actually going to kill him," Kris mutters. "And then who will be left with the paperwork?" He picks up a winch cover that someone has mended and goes to fit it back into place.

"You're a good mediator. I'm sure you'll work something out," Adam tells him, walking around the winch to start clamping the cover down on the other side. "Polite and concerned, right?"

Kris watches Adam's hands, quick and efficient on the fiddly catches. "Sometimes. It's all about making the rules work for you, you know," he hears himself say. Adam nods like that wasn't patently ridiculous and pretentious sounding. Kris thinks this time and says, "Well. I have to get ahead somehow with my limited skill set."

Adam nods again, all smiling serious. "Are you taking mental notes or something?" Kris asks. "Because this is not some sort of life plan." There seems to be some sort of commotion coming from downstairs but he feels caught on Adam's gaze, unable to look away.

"That's what you think. If this all falls through I'll write a book, 'Captain Allen's Guide to Success' and sell it door to door, like those miracle cure people who are always getting grievances brought against them. Only I would actually help people change their lives," Adam asserts with a stupidly compelling amount of confidence. If he came to Kris's door promising to change his life, Kris might not able to resist buying everything on offer.

Then the commotion bursts onto deck and reveals itself to be his crew in full argument. Katy is in the middle, being carried on a chair and yelling at people. Mostly at Matt and Michael, who look to be trying to help Scott and Anoop with the chair. At least Kris assumes they’re trying to help rather than to get in everyone's way - which is what they are mostly accomplishing.

They set Katy down in the middle of the deck, where she surveys her kingdom. Kris goes over to her, and she gives him an easy smile and says, very firmly, "No. You may not help with the carrying. I will not have this conversation with another injured person." She gives Matt a pointed look.

Kris thinks about looking indignant but Katy has known him a very long time, and Kris has had to deal with this meaning that he can't fool her for even a moment.

Scott grins. "This is exactly the kind of thing I joined the Conway for, anyway. Never a dull moment, you said..." He nods at Anoop and they lift up the chair again, Adam going ahead to open the gate for them.

"I thought we lured you here with our shiny equipment and sense of camaraderie?" Kris asks.

Scott gives him a deadpan smile. "Oh no, Captain. It was all for days like this."

People actually stop and stare at them as they go past, a circus procession of injury and makeshift bandaging. The woman in the reception of the Medical Wing quickly sorts them into various rooms and assigns them doctors. Kris discovers that he has a sprained wrist and more bruises than he thought, looking at them in the cold light of day. When they’re done wih him, he goes to wait for Katy. They seem to be taking an age with her, and it's starting to fray at his nerves. She been improving over the last day or so, he’s sure of it. Or at least he had been until they took her away to this special room that she still hasn’t come out of.

“That is the face of a brooding man,” Adam says as he sits down in the chair by Kris.

Kris feels Adam lean sideways, rest a little weight, shoulder to shoulder. He turns his head and gives Adam his perkiest expression. “Better?” he asks.

Adam grimaces. “Oh lord, did the doctor give you opiates?” he says, voice pitched low and teasing, for Kris’s ears only.

“If only,” Kris says, and pulls out his pill bottles. “She would only let me have some analgesics and some sleeping tablets. And that was under duress and only after she saw the ridiculous colour of the bruise on my side.” Even Kris had been kind of taken aback by that one.

Adam says, “Snap,” chinking his own bottles against Kris’s like a toast. He looks at the door across the way. “Still in there, huh?”

“It’s been half an hour,” Kris grumbles. Doctors make him feel prickly and unsure and it’s _Kat_ trapped behind that door with them. The tiny blonde girl who lay on the grass at school lunches with him, watching the ships go flying overhead on their way to the nearby dock. And that's it, isn't it? He'll sit outside her door and feel sick with it, but they were always meant to fly, the three of them.

Kris tries to relax as yet more minutes tick past. Adam is unusually quiet, just letting Kris put more and more of his weight on him until Kris is basically listing sideways onto him. There's a small part of him that's pretty sure this is conduct unbecoming a Captain of the Fleet, never mind a Prince, but the rest of him is battered and worried and couldn't care less about conduct, resting on Adam’s side, feeling the steady rhythm of his breathing - alive, alive, alive.

 

&&&&&

"And when Adam goes to pick me up, the metal of his Upgrade is so cold it's like a shock and I'm just wearing a blouse so I shriek, obviously, and the two of them start freaking out and Adam can't work out whether to put me down or keep still..." Katy somehow snatches in a breath among the laughter. "Oh god. And I'm trying to explain that I'm fine, it was just cold, but neither of them can hear because they're too busy talking over each other in a panic." She leans back in her chair, overcome.

"Well, I'm glad you find our distress so amusing," Kris says, but that just makes everyone laugh more, Matt snorting into his sleeve.

They're three days out of the Chantier and things are starting to feel normal again. Kris's body has stopped wrenching him out of sleep and into full alert every morning, and he's started to give himself five minutes to reassemble his thoughts in the calm of his bed, watching shadows play across the ceiling, listening to the small noises Adam makes in his sleep.

The crew finally have time to do everything they've been meaning to do, now that the ship doesn't have to be doted upon every hour of the day and night. Which is why he's been stuck in this meeting about water usage for nearly an hour now.

“We could stop and pump in some fresh, if we pass over a suitable body of water,” Katy suggests. “Do you have the groundwater chart?”

“I think Anoop does,” Kris says, spotting an out. “I’ll go get it.”

He's in Anoop’s room sorting through the mess of charts when he hears the sound of footsteps. The pattern of steps is so odd and slow that he goes to the door to see what’s going on.

It’s Adam, walking with both hands pressed to the wall of the corridor and his face turned towards it. Kris can see the muscles on his neck straining as he focuses. His steps are slow, one foot placed softly in front of the other. Adam moves his head a little and what Kris had thought was a smudge at the corner of his eye resolves into eyelashes, dark against Adam’s cheek. Kris almost laughs when he works out what’s going on.

Adam takes another step, intent on the whir of the ship as he slides a careful hand along the wall. Kris doesn’t know why he does it but he steps forwards, out of the safety of the doorway, and Adam’s eyes snap open, blue inked black by shock.

“Um, I was just…” he says, and stutters out a laugh.

“I know,” Kris says. “Trying to find the engine room by feel.” The fact that Adam even remembers that conversation is sort of unbelievable. “Making good progress?” he asks.

Adam nods, his longer-than-regulation hair falling into his eyes, and Kris has to jam his hands into his pockets to stop himself brushing it back.

“I’ve got really far,” Adam says. “I’m not giving up now.” He gives Kris a satisfied smile.

"It's harder than it sounds. I've been known to open my eyes now and then," Kris admits.

Adam shuts his eyes again, perfectly serious, and the fact that he’s really carrying Kris’s silly ritual through is strangely touching.

But now Adam’s face is exposed, and it’s almost too much to be so close, close enough to see the shadows caught in the dip of his collarbone and the laughter lines that run from the corners of his eyes.

There’s no way anyone could think that Adam wasn’t attractive. Kris can’t possibly be blamed.

“Think I can make it by lunch?” Adam asks, and Kris says, “Um,” because somehow, he can’t think of a single sensible thing to say.

"I won't be late," Adam promises. They're celebrating Katy's being able to move around under her own steam by having a picnic up on deck. "Katy threatened me with... Er. Anyway. See you there!" He hasn't opened his eyes again this whole time, trusting and unselfconscious.

Kris's mind offers, "Absolutely, it should be a fine meal." He's fairly proud of himself.

Kris lets himself watch Adam leave, the fluid line of his arm and shoulder that Kris could run his finger up to rest on that exposed patch of skin between collar and hair. It’s not Adam’s fault that he makes Kris think things and feel things that he hasn’t for, well, a while. It’s like... It’s like in those novels that Katy was addicted to when they were teenagers, the mysteries set in huge old houses with portraits with eye holes and secret passages. Adam doesn’t mean to open all of these doors in Kris’s head, he just leans on a candlestick or pulls out the right book or whatever and exposes them to the world.

Kris very firmly finds something else to think about. It's not like he's short of problems without solutions, these days.

&&&&&

Kris is contemplating his cards in mild despair when one of the bells on Katy's wall starts to ring. She frowns at him over the top of her cards. "If I find out that you've got Lil to sound that to get you out of playing whist with me, I’ll make you live to regret it," she threatens.

"Katherine! How could you suggest such a thing?" So he was down to his last token. Didn't mean he wanted to leave.

"So it's something to concern us," Katy says. Her face is still pale and pain-lined, and worry shows up all too clearly. "Off you go then," she adds, shooing him away with her cards.

"You didn't have a good hand after all," Kris says accusingly, and dashes off.

Lil and Anoop are waiting on the lookout. They appear a little uneasy but not panicked.

He mentally crosses his fingers.

"Ship in sight, just out of range," Lil says.

"Mercenaries?" Kris asks, stomach twisting. He's got a stitched up crew and a patched up ship; this is the very last thing they want.

Lil frowns. "No. Fleet. Well, we think - we don't..."

Anoop says, "It looks a lot like the Independent. Only she's staying out of range and going to broadside as often as possible. Which seems a bit strange."

"Huh. That is odd," Kris says. He looks into the proffered telescope. “And it does seem to be the Independent.” The Conway used to be docked next to the Independent in port so he knows her lines well.

“Signal Matt to reduce to minimum speed. Let’s see what they do then.”

“Er. There is always the chance that the Independent has been boarded and taken over,” Lil says. She winces, as if she might make the possibility real by voicing it. Kris sympathises. You get superstitious, flying.

“Good point. I’m putting the ship on tactical alert. Lil, sound it, please.”

Kris hears the clanging of the portholes being shuttered. He takes another look at the Independent. It doesn’t look battle damaged, but it’s too far away to be sure. It’s like Kris’s first drill sergeant used to say - there’s no such thing as being over prepared.

“They’ve slowed their speed to match ours, Captain,” Lil reports.

There is a clatter of feet on the stairs and when Kris turns, Adam is standing at the top of them, pink-cheeked and dishevelled.

“Bells?” he asks.

He’s not wearing any shoes. No jacket or waistcoat or even a necktie, and his feet are bare on the deck.

“Why are the bells of impending doom going off again?” Adam repeats, frowning.

“It’s the tactical alert signal. There’s a ship on the horizon that we think is an ally, but it’s acting oddly.”

“A Fleet ship? How is it being odd, is it...” Adam trails off, probably noticing the looks he’s getting from all three of them. “What?”

“You’re not wearing any shoes,” Kris says slowly and yes, it does sound just as strange said out loud.

Adam glances down at himself and shrugs, as if it’s normal for him to be anything less than perfectly turned out when in public.

“Oh, I was in the shower and then all these bells starting ringing so I thought I’d better jump to it. Time and sky pirates wait for no man, and all that.”

It’s an explanation, certainly. Kris wishes he could say that it’s put his mind at ease.

Adam comes forward to take a look through Lil’s eyepiece, hair dripping water down the back of his neck.

“Our concern is that she might have been captured. It would explain the distance they’re keeping,” Anoop says, and chews at his lip. “I mean, why else would they do that. We _know_ her.”

“When you say ally,” Adam asks Kris quietly.

“Definitely on the list,” Kris confirms.

“They’ve launched something, coming this way,” Lil says. She adjusts the array and the lenses move, slotting into new positions. Kris sneaks a look at Adam, watches him watching the mechanisms.

Lil says, “Looks like a messenger,” and waves Anoop forward. He peers into another glass. Navigators have good eyes by necessity, so he’ll be a good second opinion.

“Do you agree?” Kris asks him. Lil turns her head back to give him an affronted look.

“You know I have to check. We can’t risk anything right now.”

Lil puts her eye back to the telescope for a few moments, and then cocks her head at Anoop, who nods.

“We’re sure. Messenger, standard class.”

Adam says, “Um.” He fidgets for a few moments and then blurts out, “An actual automated ship to ship messenger carrier. That’s what you mean? I thought... Really?”

“Aw, sweetheart,” Lil says.

Adam ducks his head a little. “I’ve never seen one.”

Kris goes to defend Adam without even thinking. “They _are_ amazing, Lil. I should have shown Adam ours, even though it’s tiny.” He turns to Adam. “The ones they carry on a Standard class like the Independent, they can go really far.”

Anoop offers Adam a small telescope and a large grin. “Knock yourself out,” he says, getting up. “I’d better go let everyone know what’s going on.”

They wait it out on the lookout. Lil leans back in her chair, face turned into the spring sunshine. Adam’s hair curls at the ends as it dries, and they all watch the tiny shape traverse the distance from the Independent.

Once Kris can make out the wings on the messenger, he says, “Come on, Adam,” and takes him down to the carrier bay.

He opens the shutters. “Don’t stand directly in front of the magnets,” he tells Adam, who seems to be trying to investigate everything at once.

Adam stares around. “I can’t believe you haven’t shown me this before,” he says, with a heartbroken air.

Kris laughs. “I didn’t want to peak too soon.”

Adam laughs too, low in his throat. The carrier room is a cupboard of a place at the best of times and it feels tiny now, with Adam filling it up with warm looks and appreciative noises.

The magnets click over. Kris tugs Adam out of the way as the messenger sails in and settles onto the array like a bird returning to its roost.

Kris picks out the content cylinder, moving aside to let Adam at the messenger.

The note is short and to the point, a request for identification, written in code. It’s signed “They say captured. Surely not? K.C.” Kris grins.

“Why aren’t I stuck fast to these magnets?” Adam asks, peering in a fairly unsubtle way at the paper in Kris’s hand.

Kris watches Adam’s frown deepen, but he just says, “Oh they’re not that strong. They’re specially calibrated to attract the messengers.”

“Hmm,” Adam comments, clearly distracted by the note, and Kris relents.

“You can’t read it because it’s in code,” he explains, passing Adam the paper. “Fleet officer code, to be precise, which I’m not supposed to tell you about on pain of... Anyway. It’s a request for a reply which identifies me. Proof that we’ve not been captured, which is what they think for some reason.”

Adam is staring at the message, head cocked. “You can do that? And, wait, just decode this in your head?”

“Sure.” Kris takes the paper back. And then, because the world so rarely lets you have the perfect comeback, he adds, “I am more than just a pretty face, you know.”

Adam says, “We have something similar, actually,” but his mouth is all curled up with amusement.

Kris scribbles back his reply as fast as he can, looking up occasionally to instruct Adam on how to reset all the magnets.

“You’re pretty good at following directions, for a Prince,” Kris says, watching Adam’s hands move to exactly where Kris had meant.

Adam seamlessly pushes the last lever back into place. “Only when I like my C.O,” he says.

“More like only when you like the directions,” Kris responds, trying for dry. It’s unsurprisingly hard when you’re smiling this much.

Kris finishes up his reply and tucks it into cylinder. The messenger sets back on its return journey, skimming the edge of the window and out into the blue.

He gestures at the note in his hand. “I should take this up to Katy.”

Adam still has one hand possessively over the lever. “Should I - ”

“No,” Kris interrupts. “You’ve no duty here. Stay, it’s fine. You can probably fix anything you break by this point.”

Katy and Michael are still sitting where he left them, cards on the table, but they’re not even pretending to play. “Anoop said... Do we have anything yet?” Katy asks, sharp.

“The message from the Independent.” Kris says, quickly, going over to hand it to her. “No, don’t stand up, Michael.”

Everyone is supposed to be on reduced duty, more rest. Michael – concussion, broken ribs – shouldn’t even be upright. But he and Katy are united in some sort of stubborn solidarity where everyone tries to act like nothing is out of the ordinary and no one asks how the other is feeling. Sometimes Matt joins them to all be crazedly determined together, and Kris can’t order them to just _stop_ like he wants to. There’s just too much to do.

Katy reads the note and smiles at the end.

Kris says, “I told her ‘No, because you and K would kill me if I got us captured’”

She gives him a dark look. “Oh, death would be infinitely preferable to what we’d do.”

Kris supposes that’s kind of comforting, in its own way. “It should take about 20 minutes to get there, so we should know more soon.”

“I don’t think we should take the ship off alert though,” Katy says, and Kris nods along with Michael.

“Better safe than sorry is rather an upsetting life motto, but there we are,” Kris says. Katy pats him on the arm. “I was an interesting man with interesting mottoes once, I swear.”

“It’s a very Captainly motto, Sir. Much preferable to having something crazy,” Michael says comfortingly.

“Like, let’s see what this lever does?” Katy suggests. “Or, death or Glory!”

“Death or death!” Michael calls.

Kris laughs. “That would be much more upsetting, it’s true.”

&&&&&

The Independent draws alongside, all sleek lines and burnished copper shining in the sun. The crew yell greetings and instructions to the Conway, and pretty soon they have the two ships steady enough for a gangway to be rigged between them.

“Permission to come aboard,” Jen, the lieutenant, calls across. She’s standing on the railing, holding a line, and it’s all kinds of great to see her, smiling and dependable.

“Be our guest,” Kris shouts back.

Adam stands beside him, running his eyes over the Independent hungrily.

“Don’t you go cheating on our girl, now,” Kris warns him.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Adam says, looking indignant. “She is fine, though - the Independent – isn’t she?”

“A real old school beauty,” Kris agrees. “She’s much more robust than the Conway, a power hitter.”

“Nothing wrong with being understated,” Adam says, stroking the railing absentmindedly. Kris is almost shocked when the Conway doesn’t purr.

The crew of the Independent attach lines to secure the two ships, and then the Captain appears at the gate to the gangway. She strolls across, easier than someone separated from a very long fall by a very thin rope bridge has any right to be.

“Who on earth have you pissed off this time, Captain Allen?” Kelly says, by way of greeting.

“What makes you think I’ve pissed anyone off?” Kris returns, trying an innocent face on her. “This is Prince Adam, by the way. So watch your language.”

“Captain Clarkson, I presume,” Adam says, and inclines his head, ever the gentleman.

“Sire,” Kelly says, returning the gesture. “So. Maybe I should ask who _you’ve_ pissed off, then.”

Adam snorts with laughter. “How long have you got,” he says.

“We have a list,” Kris tells Kelly. She doesn’t look surprised.

“Okay, who have you pissed off enough that they would send out a message that you’d been overrun by mercenaries and to shoot the Conway on sight?"

“They _what_?” Kris hadn’t thought that they were out of the woods, not by far, but this. This is miserable news.

Adam asks, “Why didn’t you shoot us on sight, then? What is it with you people and direct orders? This is all most disturbing for your possible future Commander.”

Kelly gives Kris a knowing look. “Yes, well. I can’t be held responsible for Captain Allen’s special interpretation of any given set of rules. But I do know better than to think that he’d let anyone fly off with his ship.” She throws Adam a smile. “He has this weird relationship with the Conway, don’t know if you’d noticed.”

“I might have,” Adam says with a conspiratorial grin.

“You give with one hand and take away with the other, Kel. But thanks, for the vote of confidence,” Kris says. “We were damn lucky it was you.”

“Not exactly.” Kelly smiles. “They gave out your last known co-ordinates, so I thought I should come take a look.” She slips an arm into Kris’s. “Now, take me somewhere, feed me coffee and show me that list.”

They go to the cabin and conversation is about 15 minutes in when Kris realises that Adam has gone from smiling to just sitting on his bunk looking mildly dazed.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“You’ve both been going further South with every word since Captain Clarkson got here. It’s slightly terrifying,” Adam says.

“Oh come on. Surely you mean gorgeously attractive,” Kelly says, grinning.

Adam goes very still.

Kelly raises her eyebrows at him. “Oh _really_.”

“It’s a weakness of mine, what can I say?” Adam says, looking slightly star-struck at Kelly’s smile. Kris remembers the feeling.

“Don’t worry, there’s not a man alive who can resist these vowel sounds,” Kelly reassures him, and Kris can hear it now, the cadence they’ve dropped back into, the way the words spin out.

Adam says, “So, the Captain - that is to say, the other Captain – is all up to date now? Because I lost you somewhere around the 10 minute mark. Sorry, but you shouldn’t be so distracting. It’s like chamber music.” He gives them both a particularly winning smile, one that Kris can imagine him bestowing on a favourite. How many boys heard something like that before Adam whisked them off to dance in front of the orchestra of however many it had been?

“And now you’ve wandered off. What is it with you two and having your head in the clouds?” Kelly says, prodding Kris in the arm.

Kris catches Adam’s eye and he can almost see the jokes forming. “Kel? We’re on an airship,” Kris points out, waving his hand towards the window.

“We don’t really have a choice in the matter,” Adam says, mouth in a serious line.

Kelly makes an exasperated noise that is usually accompanied by a roll of her eyes at Katy. “Yes, _thank you_. I am quite caught up. The number of people you’ve collectively managed to make want to kill you is becoming less surprising.”

She picks up their lists again. She’d looked half pleased, half amused to find herself up near the top of the list of allies, mouth twitching at the corner as she’d said, “Honestly, Kristopher.”

“She’s amazing,” Adam mouths at Kris while Kelly’s not looking, and Kris nods. She’s always been everything he admires in a captain. Plus she reminds him of home.

Kelly makes a hmming noise at the list of enemies. “If Commander Warwick really isn’t to be trusted, then that would explain the message about you being captured. It came privately from his command post, as opposed to the usual channels. We’d only been out of port a short while when we received it.”

“The plot thickens...” Adam says, sounding wearier than Kris suspects that he means to. “While you were there, did you hear anything about Allie?"

Kelly scrunches her face, confused.

“The Princess Select,” Kris clarifies.

“Oh! She’s ‘recuperating in Lord Gokey’s family estate’, apparently” Kelly says. She doesn’t sound at all convinced.

“That makes sense, keeping her out of Court but only an hour or so away, somewhere completely loyal to him,” Adam says. “But, she’s alright?”

Kelly nods. “From what I know. She’s not been seen outside the mansion; I’m thinking house arrest? The Bravo took up additional guards a couple of days ago, and a few of the crew mentioned her being there. Cross but well seemed the general opinion”

Kris gives silent thanks because cross he can live with. In fact, cross is great. It means Allie is still there, still fighting.

Adam lets out a breath. “The Gokey estate is practically on our way to the Court...” he says, thoughtfully, and Kris watches Kelly’s eyes widen.

“I can’t hear this,” she says, fast. “I support you all a hundred percent, but no one knows I’ve met you, and I plan to keep it that way. These are dangerous times, and I’m not risking my ship.”

“I know, Kel, don’t worry about it,” Kris tells her, because no one should ever feel guilty about putting their people first. The thing is, Adam and Allie are his people too, and he’s terrified Adam is going to make him choose.

“Well, then, I’m going to go yell at Katy for getting shot. People I am fond of are not to get themselves shot,” Kelly says, with the firmness of someone whose word has long been established law.

Kris holds out his hands. “That’s what I said, but what can you do?”

“Frankly, the Conway seems to breed a particular kind of madness. You should watch yourself, Sire, it’s catching.” And with that, Kelly sweeps out.

Adam gives Kris a reproachful look, as if he’d never done a foolhardy thing in his life before he stepped on board the ship.

“Don’t even _try_ ,” Kris says to him, with a grin. “I know you better than that.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Adam agrees, but his expression drifts out of teasing as he speaks, too caught up in whatever he’s thinking.

“So, about this ‘on the way to the Court’ business?” Kris doesn’t really want to bring it up, because he can only see a few ways that this could go and none of them are safe. He goes to sit with Adam on his bunk, leaning his back against the ropes at the other end of the bed from Adam.

“We should go get Allie. Once I’m back at Court, things are going to get nasty, and fast. I’d much rather that I knew she was safe; else Daniel will be able to use her as a pawn. Or, Le Renard will,” Adam amends, giving Kris a grudging nod.

It would be the perfect hold to have over Adam. It was only Kris mentioning her name that got Adam on the Conway in the first place, took him away from his battle, what seems like a decade ago.

Moreover, Allie is in danger now and it’s only increasing every day. If they left her, and then something happened...

“Exactly,” Adam says, watching Kris’s expression. “Not an option.”

“How well defended is this place? Because we’re already taking enough risks just flying. Most people aren’t Kelly. They’ll shoot first and ask questions later.”

Adam flinches at that. “There used to be one cannonade guard tower at the entrance to the landing bay at the Gokey house. But apart from that, nothing too scary. We could take out something like that without even going into their range, right?”

“We could, but... It’s one thing firing on a mercenary ship, even one hired by the Court, and another firing on an official guard post manned by soldiers of the realm. Kel told us that they shipped men in; they’re just ordinary soldiers, doing their jobs.” Kris knows what the Conway can do to a small guard post, the way the cannon rips through the wood until there’s nothing but flames and splinters and scattered limbs.

Kris notices that both he and Adam have moved from their positions at either end of the bunk, closing in on each other, and shuffles himself back. He spends half his time putting space, objects, anything, between him and Adam, and the other half leaning in, unthinking as metal to a magnet.

“Rock, hard place,” Kris mutters. There are no safe options anywhere, these days.

“I know, I know, and the thought of putting you all in more danger is unsupportable. But I can’t just leave Allie there, Kris, I _can’t_.”

“You know as well as I do that you can just order me to take you there,” Kris says. This would completely count as ‘In defence of the Kingdom and the royal family’ and so Adam’s authority is final.

Adam stops fiddling with the links at the wrist of his Upgrade and pins Kris with an intent look.

“I wouldn’t,” he says. “I won’t. I can only ask. It’s your ship.”

Kris remembers Adam’s face when he talked about duty, other people’s lives in his hands. He knows what he’s asking of Kris. Nodding, Kris says, “If we were to do this, how would we make it - well, not safe, but - something less than suicidal and treasonous.”

“Is that?” Adam starts, and then clears his throat. “Is that a yes?”

Kris says, “Convince me.”

&&&&&

It turns out that planning with Adam involves a lot more props than Kris is used to. He fails to find this surprising.

&&&&&

The first step in the plan is for Kris to stand on the steps to the Bridge and explain to his assembled crew that the action they are about to take part in may not be entirely legal.

It goes better than he thought it would.

"Did you see this coming?" Kris asks, when the worst reaction seems to be exaggerated sighing and a few sarcastic comments.

"We serve on the Conway. This day was always going to come," Matt says. "We either joined because of that fact, or we made our peace with it long ago."

Scott says, "There are only so many times you can do what's right and not what you're told before it comes back to bite you, right?"

No one looks like they are going to argue, and his crew are not exactly backwards in coming forward. Which means that they have faith in Kris, probably more than he does himself. He takes a brief moment to be unsettled by that.

“To your stations, then,” he orders.

&&&&&

Kris puts out an arm to stop Adam pacing in and out of the Bridge. “It’s going to work,” he says. It comes out a lot more certain than he was expecting.

Adam raises an eyebrow. “I saw you going for your watch. It’s only been 30 seconds since the last time you looked, you know.” He stares at the tower as if he can make them reply through sheer force of will. It almost looks like he could, the bright sunlight making everything flat and unreal, a little toy tower guarding a dollhouse. But there are lives at stake here -a very real tower of soldiers - and thinking of people as playthings might be seductively easy but it’s so, so _dangerous_.

Kris takes his hand away from his pocket. “Just. Stay out here. Then you can see what’s going on, alright? You’ll wear a groove in the floor at this rate.”

Adam bounces slightly on his heels, all nervous energy. “Why haven’t they sent the messenger back to us yet?” he says. “I hate waiting.”

“We would never have guessed,” Anoop calls, long suffering. The guard tower has only used up five of the ten minutes they were given in the message, but it feels a lot longer. “And before you ask, no, I haven’t heard from the lookout.”

The signal box pings and Anoop gives it an annoyed glance. “You just had to show me up,” he mutters then looks up. “Lil has sent the retreat signal. The guards have left the tower.”

Adam releases a long breath. Kris supposes that his experience in the Chantier had dented the certainty he had in his command, in the idea that he would be able to sign with his Commander’s seal and know that any soldier would obey without question. Kris thinks that they would have, though.

“Prepare to take out the tower armaments,” Kris calls down to Matt. He’s never going to feel completely comfortable with making his crew fire on a military outpost, but this way there’s no chance of the Conway being fired on as they approach the landing.

“I could make the call,” Adam offers, but he’s gone pale at the thought of it. If there are men left, they’re going to die. They could be Adam’s men, his subjects and his soldiers, and he’s risking that so that the Conway is protected. It wouldn’t be right.

Kris gives the order and he hopes that it will be to take out an empty tower, that all the guards really have followed Adam’s orders in the message and evacuated. That would be the best possible outcome to Adam’s plan; the one that keeps them vaguely within sight of the law, and at least touching distance of their consciences.

The tower is at the edge of their range, just a silhouette against the green of the hills to Kris’s eye. But their aim is true from the first shot, smoke billowing up into the sky. Kris sees a chunk of something fall to the ground.

“I don’t see any bodies,” Adam says, conversationally. Kris looks at him, face schooled blank, and then at the licks of flame in the distance and his stomach turns.

“Let’s just get this over with,” Kris says.

They disembark at the end of a long gravel drive, more suited for sweeping up in carriages. Kris has been to the occasional party where they’ve done that, picked the guests up from their ships in small buggies, as if the five minute walk to the house is too much to expect.

Matt whistles as they approach the house and the outline gains details – wide glass windows and carved stonework. “Nice,” he says.

Adam frowns at him. “You think so? I always found it rather…” he shrugs. “Provincial?”

Matt says, “You’re a strange and particular man, Commander,” and rolls his eyes. Kris has never seen Matt look anything other than laid back in stressful situations, even when they’re under fire. Walking into unknown enemy territory is not going to stop him being a smart aleck.

The house has a large main gate, heavily barred with a series of gear-ratcheted rails. There is one guard who has clearly been watching their progress, one hand on the butt of a large gun resting at his side.

Adam says, “We are here for the Princess Alison. You are holding her prisoner in this house and that is unlawful and unjust.”

The guard gives them a look that suggests he is somewhat unmoved by this. It’s likely that he’s Gokey’s man, more loyal than the guards brought in to man the watchtower.

"Or, I could signal to our ship to start with the cannonade of the house. You can see what became of your watchtower.” Adam gestures back towards the plume of smoke, unyieldingly calm. “It’s amazing how accurate they can be with the cannons. Your door wouldn’t last too long and then we’d have no reason to keep you alive.”

Kris swallows but says nothing. It's a bluff, but on a strong hand, and one that he would play on a day like today. He can't afford to lose Allie, in every way possible.

The man looks past them to where the Conway is waiting on the horizon, Kris's home made into a weapon primed to fire, and panic flashes across his face.

"Take her then, for the good it'll do you," he growls. "You'll get caught within the day."

The guard enters a combination, then twists a lever by the door and in moments it is swinging open to reveal a courtyard garden, rows of pristine hedges and manicured lawns. “I’ll just go get her,” he says.

Adam strides into the garden as if he's at the head of an all-conquering army.

They all follow, weapons drawn as they crunch along gravel paths. Kris draws level with Adam as they reach the centre, the garden still and sun-warmed.

"Don't worry. She'll be fine," he says, half to himself, heart beating hard already.

Adam says, "I'm not worrying," while biting his bottom lip. "That went well? I thought that went well. I tried your calm reasoning trick, it seemed to go over well. Oh dear, I can't seem to stop saying the word well."

Matt says, "Most tricks go over well when backed up by the threat of cannon fire."

Something bangs above them. Kris has his acoustic out and his back to Adam's before the echo stops ringing around the courtyard. Then the door at the end opens and the guard appears with Allie trailing sulkily behind. Adam makes a choking sound and her face changes as she sees them, smile lighting up like a signal flare, and then Allie is a blur of red and black as she runs to them. Adam catches her and holds her tight, wrapping her up in himself.

"Why are you crying?" Allie says into Adam's chest, and he laughs, or at least tries to, the sound coming out jagged.

"I don't know, baby girl. Why are you crying, Kris?"

Allie looks up at that, and the smile that she gives him makes Kris's chest hurt. "Allie started it," he says, wiping his eyes. He goes over and kisses her on the top of the head, because it doesn't look like Adam is going to let go of his sister any time soon.

Adam says, "It's good to see you, is all. Are you... Are you alright?"

Allie straightens up a little. She looks much the same as when Kris last saw her, although the colour of her hair has faded slightly, and her expression is not as it should be - a little too wary. "I'm fine," she says. "They only started locking me into the house after I escaped for the third time."

"Good for you," Matt tells her, moving back towards the door, gun in his hand and pride in his smile.

Adam says, "Well, even if we can't rescue you from your tower like a proper princess, I thought I would come pick you up on my way home anyway."

"He hitched a lift with us," Kris tells Allie, grinning sideways at Adam.

"Captain Allen claimed to have the best ship in the Fleet, how could I say no?" Adam says, glancing quickly at Kris, eyes teasing.

Allie bumps Adam with her shoulder. "Don’t you mean Captain Kristopher?"

Kris usually feigns annoyance at the nickname, but he doesn't even want to try right now.

"Well, just Kris most of the time, but I didn't want you to think I lacked respect for the good Captain," Adam says, very seriously. Kris should be used to the way that Adam says his name by now, all Northern vowels and intimacy, but it still makes his mind stutter.

Allie rolls her eyes at him. "That's right, else I'd think you were taking liberties." She looks around, a little anxiously. This is not a look Kris expects from the Princess Select. "Shouldn't we go? I would rather... I would like to go."

Kris signals to Matt who peers round the door. Adam still isn't moving, arms tight around Allie.

"Adam?" Kris tries. Adam frowns at him. Allie sighs and adjusts his arms so that his upgrade is free and his other arm is over her shoulders. She shares an indulgent look with Kris that says a lot about Adam and as much about love, and they finally start back across the garden.

The guard is waiting at the gate and says, "His lordship will hear about this." His expression is vindictive, worsening when Allie sweeps Adam past him, easily dismissive, as if he'd never had any power over her at all.

Matt is already fumbling out the flags as they hurry along the road to the harbour. "Signal to be ready for immediate cast off?" he asks Kris.

"Please," Kris says. There's no way they can build up enough of a lead to get to the Court before the message gets back to Daniel about what they've done. But then, they were always susceptible to something like this, and looking at Allie and Adam, he finds he's not sorry. Certainly not as much as he thought he'd be.

He finds himself walking a little faster anyway, away from the house that had caged Allie in, and he begrudges it every spark of brightness it took from her.

The crew are all standing by when they get back, and as soon as Allie steps onto they give her a quick synchronised salute, which she returns neatly. She learnt to salute Fleet style last summer, when she would hang around the Port and pretend to be crew, carrying anything she could lay her hands on and calling all the Captains by their titles. Kris has never loved any of them more, the crew and their Princess, who's now helping them to undo the final lines as the engines rev to get them flying again.

Allie coils the rope at her feet and then looks round. Adam is by her side again instantly, putting his arm round her like he has to keep making sure she’s real. “We have some catching up to do,” he says, and leads Allie down below deck.

Kris goes up to the bridge. “Here, let me take that for a while,” he says to Anoop. He doesn’t take the controls all that often these days, but he’d been a fair navigator in his time. It’s.. uncomplicated.

He flies until he can see the wide bay of the capital - the busy port and the towers of the court. When he looks at his watch, it turns out that half an hour has passed in catching currents and pulling levers. He feels calmer in himself, ready to deal with the emotional maelstrom that is Adam and Allie, Adam _with_ Allie. He goes to Katy’s room but she waves him away.

“They went off to your cabin. I think Adam was starting to get tetchy about sharing his sister, although obviously he was too polite to say so.”

When Kris opens the door, Allie gives him a very pointed look. She’s sitting on Adam’s bunk with a blanket around her shoulders, and the expression on her face as she cuts her eyes to her brother reminds Kris of the one she’d wear after someone tried to make her come down from a high place or take a weapon from her hands.

Adam is watching Allie with nervous eyes from his place at Kris’s desk, sitting very straight on his chair. Kris can almost see the worry bleeding out of the tense lines of him.

Kris says, “I hear you’ve been writing tales of me to your brother,” in an attempt to bring Adam back from the brink a little.

“Only good things,” Allie promises with an innocent expression that would work if Kris didn’t know her _much_ better than that.

“Only lies then,” Kris says with a sad shake of his head. “You must have been so disappointed, right?” he prompts Adam.

Adam tries on a grin. “You were certainly shorter than I was expecting."

Allie laughs and says, "It's not Captain Kristopher's fault that you somehow grew into a giant and alarmed Lady Abdul." She looks at Kris. "Lady Abdul was our governess. She's _tiny_."

"Your governess? That explains a few things," Kris says. He'd only met Lady Abdul once, but she'd made something of an impression. “I mean, I did wonder what kind of socialising influence Adam had as a child.”

Allie makes large, sad eyes at Adam. “It’s not his fault, poor boy.”

Adam gives them both a disappointed look. “I love that you both get on so well, I do, but could you not bond over my short-comings?”

“But it’s fun!” Allie tells him, all bright smile and bright hair.

“I have stories too,” Adam warns. “I’m not the person who stood up in the middle of a grievance session and started to sing about mice. Loudly, I might add. ”

“I was nine years old! Anyway, I’m not the one who, at age five, spent the whole summer dressed in a tiny three piece suit,” Allie responds and Kris doubles up laughing.

Adam gives Kris a betrayed look.

“What?” Kris says. “You’ve heard lots of my stories. God only knows what Matt has been telling you while I’m not around.”

“I’d tell you, but there are young ladies present,” Adam says with a shake of his head.

There’s a knock on the door.

“Come?” Kris says. People don’t usually knock, but then he supposes there are two members of royalty in here. It’s sort of hard to remember that about the two tired-looking people currently making ridiculously undignified faces at each other.

Matt sticks his head around the door. “Could I have a word, Captain? Er, you too, Commander, actually.”

“Would you like to go see Katy?” Adam asks Allie.

“Please,” she says, face brightening. Kris has always suspected that Katy is Allie’s role model.

Once she’s gone Adam says, “Sorry, I don’t like the idea of leaving her on her own.”

Matt is standing by Kris’s desk with a piece of paper in his hand. He’s rubbing the edge of it between his thumb and forefinger, which is one of his worse tells. Matt’s childhood sweetheart had sent him a letter telling him she was getting married to someone else, and he’d worn a hole in the top corner of it.

He holds it out to Kris. “It’s a warrant for our arrest. There’s a battalion waiting for us to dock. We’re being court marshalled for treason.”

Of all the worst case scenarios Kris had come up with, this is above and beyond. As far as he knows the Admiralty have never actually gone as far as calling a ship to court for treason because, “The penalty set for that is death.”

 

The Conway’s berth at the Port has always been their safe haven, the home they return to after battles and cross-continental message runs leave them ragged. But now there is a party of soldiers crowded round his gangway. Kris thinks he can just make them out in the distance, a dark shadow that grows larger the closer they get.

“We’ve got out of worse scrapes than this,” Katy says, coming to stand beside him.

Kris pulls his gaze away from the rapidly approaching - well, it’s hard to think of it as anything but an ambush, despite the warning. “You’re not really supposed to be up.”

“I think this is the kind of situation I should be around for,” Katy says, leaning back on the railing.  
Standing tall with the wind whipping her hair back against a backdrop of blue, she looks like a figurehead of some mythical creature. “Seeing as it’s my ship they’re planning on seizing.”

“We won’t let them have it,” Kris says. They’re skimming across the bay now, clouds far above and the sea just feet below. Kris leans on the gate that will open to the gangway and feels like the keeper of an untouched paradise.

“Of course not,” Katy says, like she never considered any other option, which, knowing her, she probably didn’t. “I can stall them for a while with legal talk.” She cuts Kris off before he can protest. “You think anyone else on this ship has actually read the Fleet regs? I gave Matt a copy and he used it to to hold his door open.”

Kris has to smile, and give in. “You’re right. Of course. But... God... Do you think we can actually get out of this? Maybe there’s a loop hole?” He can feel the desperation clawing to get into his voice.

Katy says, “If you’re wanting to clutch at straws, here’s a likely looking one.” She bumps Kris’s shoulder with hers. He turns around.

“Kris, can I - can we talk?” Adam asks. He looks drawn taut by worry, a line tied too tight.

They’re within shooting distance of their dock, a measurement that’s sunk itself into Kris’s mind and become his default. He looks over at Katy. “Go,” she says, shooing them with her hands. “I’ll be _fine_ , really, they’re hardly going to rough up an injured woman. And I’m not going to strain anything just by talking. Go.”

Adam pulls Kris down the stairs and into the first room below deck, which is the navigator’s space, mostly taken up by a large table covered in maps and illegible notes.

“Is everything alright? Is Allie...” Kris asks because he’d sent Adam to replace Katy on Allie watch which had served the double purpose of getting Kat up to date without alarming anyone and letting him have some time alone to try and _solve this_.

Adam’s expression is heartbreakingly fond. “She’s fine. She’s great. I’m supposed to be getting her something to eat, actually. I just, I didn’t want to say this in front of her, I’ve already had to tell her about the Court Marshall and. Fuck. She clearly hasn’t been eating or sleeping properly and...”

“She’s your baby sister,” Kris finishes. Allie may hold herself like the world is there for her amusement, but she’s so young, and she’s been held against her will for weeks. He knows exactly how Adam feels, stupid with the need to protect her.

Adam nods. “I don’t want to involve her any more than necessary, but I had this thought and...” He stops, takes a deep breath like he’s lining up a shot.

“So, I have this fantasy,” Kris says forlornly, “that you are going to say ‘Kris, don’t worry, I have come up with a plan that will get us out of this mess.’”

“Kris, don’t worry, I have come up with a plan that will get us out of this mess,” Adam repeats, eyes far too serious.

“Very funny,” Kris says, and scowls. “Don’t mock my fantasy, I’m fond of it.”

Adam reaches out and puts a hand on Kris’s shoulder. “Kris, don’t worry, I really do have a plan and it really will get us out of this mess.”

Adam’s hand is warm and his smile is sincere and Kris thinks _what did I do to deserve you_. “Explain,” he says, trying to hold his voice steady, iron out the helpless warmth, and ending up only a few degrees off commanding.

Adam slides his hand down to Kris’s back and guides him to the table, sitting down next to him. He takes a map out of his jacket pocket, one of Kris’s by the look of it. Smoothing it out in front of them, he says, “We’re going to be Court Marshalled, right? We don’t have time to prepare our defence, and we don’t have any way not to go. And we can’t show up without any proof that what we were doing was necessary, and we can’t not show up, because both of those end with unfortunate words like ‘Mutiny’ being bandied about, and no one wants that.”

“I know, Adam. Believe me, I know,” Kris says, a little more hard edged than he was expecting.

“But we _do_ have proof. We have those prisoners."

Kris feels hope leap up into his throat. Then he remembers why he dismissed that option. "But we don't have time to go fetch them, or get a message from them or anything. We, the guilty party, have to show up at the Court Marshall tomorrow. There are soldiers here who are determined to escort us, and..." This is his limit, right here.

"I know, I know you wouldn't fire on them, even if you thought it meant we could get away."

It's a line in the sand at best, but Adam has him right - Kris couldn't cross it and still live with himself. He stares at the map, at the impossible distance to the Chantier Naval, the sinuous curve of coast as it opens up to the harbour of the capital, the lines marking out the walls of the Mansion and the Court.

"But if we split up, we could do it," Adam says, voice soft. "If we tell them that I'm to blame..."

Kris looks up and catches Adam watching him intently, as if he has a gun aimed right at Kris and might fire at any sudden movement.

"But you're not," Kris says, and then feels stupid because _obviously_. But he can't imagine letting Adam just go, after all that they've done, after all this.

"Well, yes, but they don't know that. If I go and claim full responsibility, they won't know what to do. There's no precedent for this kind of thing, and they've no proof against me in particular. There'll be chaos. And that will give you the time to go back, get those damn mercenaries and bring them to the court. Then we'll have a proper case to argue."

Kris studies Adam's face for the signs of a bluff, for the smooth veneer of courtly play, but there's nothing there but conviction burning bright in his eyes.

"But, then, isn’t that just giving them what they want?" he tries. "They’ve always been after you, we’re just collateral. And I can't just leave you to fight this alone. United we stand. Right?"

Adam's smile is strange, sad with hope. "Don't talk me out of your best shot of getting out of this. I'll be fine. This is the only way." He looks down at his hands, fingers tracing routes that go nowhere on the map, meandering spirals that the Conway would get dizzy following.

"Oh, like I could talk you out of anything," Kris says. It _is_ a good plan, but he wants to try and make Adam reconsider anyway. That or bolt the door.

Adam says, quiet and simple, "You could." He doesn't look up, thankfully, because Kris is sure that he can't hide his reaction to that. It must be all over his face, plain as day.

He says, "But, will you be safe? I mean, we'll be much better off, but you’ll be..."

"I'm a Prince. There are rules. Don't worry about me, I just need you to concentrate on getting us our proof. Nothing else, just fly to the Chantier. I need to know that you will do that, keep the ship safe." Adam holds Kris's gaze, eyes dark and deep. "You can do that, right?"

"I can," Kris says, and it feels a lot like a promise made between them in this moment.

"Then I can make the trial go right," Adam assures him. "I've asked you to put your ship into dangerous situations far too many times. This time the Conway should take the easier part. I don’t want to think about the crew - Meg, Anoop, _Katy_ \- standing trial for their lives, do you? It’s been bad enough constantly worrying about being fired upon by another Fleet ship."

It's a good point, one of the more compelling of Adam's argument, and the thought of not fearing every speck on the horizon is almost too good. Kris feels slightly lightheaded at the possibility of flying free again.

"I'm not happy about it, but it is the best plan we have," he admits.

Adam says, "Well of course it is, I came up with it. Have I led you wrong before?” This is Adam too, Kris remembers, the Commander and feted military strategist. And he’s right, they have done this before, made the plan and defied the odds. Now he just has to stop the feeling he gets when he thinks about Adam stepping off the Conway and into Le Renard's waiting clutches.

“Kris,” Adam says. “We don’t have _time_. You need to say yes.” He’s right and so Kris does, says, “Okay, okay,” forcing out a smile.

Kris reaches out and puts his hand on Adam’s shoulder, mirroring his gesture from earlier. Kris’s palm is resting on the spot where the cold metal of the Upgrade meets the warmth of Adam’s body, the soft material of his jacket, which should seem strange but really, really doesn’t. "And to think," Kris says, "I only left you alone for five minutes. And you came up with a whole strategy."

Adam is quite still for a second, staring at Kris, one hand frozen halfway through some gesture, something loose and dismissive that had turned too focused, caught out. Then he stands, shakes his head, saying, “We'll need to move fast. You pack for me and I’ll go intervene with Katy and the soldiers.” Adam practically runs out of the door. Kris can’t do anything else but follow, caught up in his wake.

&&&&&

Kris puts the last of Adam's things into the case and snaps the buckles shut. Adam has some sort of combination lock on it, which Kris leaves undone. Adam has never used the lock while he's been here, case always open with clothes always spilling out of it, parts and books migrating out of it to the table and shelves. Kris tuts and goes to fetch the book that Adam's reading at the moment, one of the new ones on energy transfer which Adam has left over by the window.

The door clicks behind him and when he turns Adam is leaning on it, expression unreadable.

“How did it go?” Kris asks.

Adam exhales and seems to relax with it. He says. “Oh, fine. They bought it, I think. They’re soldiers, chain of command makes perfect sense to them.” Adam walks over, picks a shirt out of his case and starts to refold it. “The important thing is that you’re in the clear.”

Kris breathes out slowly. “And you will be too, in less than a week. Don’t forget that, okay?” He puts the book on top of the shirt which is now folded to meet Adam’s strange packing criteria. It looks pretty much the same as it had before to Kris.

"That's yours, by the way," Adam says, gesturing at the book.

"You can give it back to me when we meet again.” Kris knows that things won't be the same, but he’s fairly sure that will be allowed. Maybe he'll have to stop calling him Adam. He shuts the lid firmly.

"I should go.” Adam says, all in a rush. “I have to say goodbye to Allie before she falls asleep, and to the others."

Kris asks, "I don't warrant a goodbye?" He puts his hand on top of Adam’s case to stop him from picking it up.

Adam hesitates for a second, and seems to come to a decision. "You can’t think that," he says flatly. “You have to know you’re...”

"More," Kris says before he can think about it, stop his brain pushing it away like he's been doing since the day he met Adam, since the first time he got a stupid rush from saying his name. It’s the only word for it all, the way things have always been between them. Adam making him think more, feel more, want more.

Adam steps closer. "Then you do know it’s a stupid question."

It's been an awfully long time since Kris's heart has clenched like this, but this is what Adam does, after all. "I’m a little shocked that you're admitting it, though, when we were both doing such a good job of repression," he says.

Adam bows his head. Then, almost without looking back up, he reaches out and envelops Kris in a crushing hug. "In another life..." he says into Kris's hair.

"One with a better outlook?" Kris says. The stray ideas, the ones on the edge of his consciousness, that he has between one thought and another, between sleep and waking, all end like this. If Adam didn’t have a country and Kris didn’t have a ship, maybe they could see where this could go.

"Clearer skies and a following wind," Adam agrees. He presses a kiss to where Kris's hair meets his brow, and that's as much as they can have, in this life.

Adam stays like that - bottom lip warm on Kris's forehead, breath catching his hair - for a long moment. Kris wants to let him stay there but he can't - it would be damaging if they got used to it.

He steps back from Adam.

"You should go say your other goodbyes," he says.

Adam nods once, and then again firmer. “Meet me in Katy’s room? Allie will be wondering where I’ve got too, I’m supposed to be getting her more tea. You want some?”

Kris says, "I guess I can risk it. I'll bring your case up." That feels right, like closing the loop.

Adam smiles, says, "Quite right too, Captain Allen." And then he leaves.

Kris must have got used to there being more things in his room, Adam’s possessions mixed in with Kris's like they belonged there, because it feels emptier now. He sits on Adam's bunk for a few minutes, just to make sure that he's ready for what's coming.

In Katy’s room Allie greets him with a wave of a cup. She’s looking quite at home, wearing one of Katy’s nightgowns and sitting cross-legged on her bunk,.

“Adam made tea,” she says in mournful tones. She takes a gulp and makes a truly dreadful face.

Kris says, “Adam has many skills, but tea is really not one of them. I think he gets distracted by the water boiler.”

Adam narrows his eyes and Kris takes the cup he’s proffering.

“He _is_ terribly easily distracted by shiny things,” Allie says with a sigh. “He nearly walked through a window once because he was dismantling this watch and wasn’t watching where he was going.”

Kris laughs. He often keeps an eye on Adam when he’s wandering starry eyed and contemplative about the deck, so it’s easy to imagine.

“Are we still playing this game?” Adam says, but he can’t hold the cross expression on his face for long. As soon as Allie smiles at him it dissolves into a helpless tenderness. He sits down on the bed and puts his arm round his sister, and she curls into him, cradling her tea carefully in one hand.

Adam drops a kiss onto her head and says brightly, “Drink your tea, before it gets cold.”

Kris has grasped for the mundane enough times to see what Adam is doing.

Kris says, “Yes, because the only thing worse than bad tea is cold, bad tea.” He drinks some more of his, which is, to be fair to Adam, not as terrible as Allie’s face would suggest.

Allie takes a begrudging sip and snuggles down into Adam's side, yawning. Kris can’t look at them without wanting to fix everything for them somehow, give them the merry life he had always thought they had. The one they deserve.

“I should go check on,” he waves his hand as if this will make him look and sound less vague, “things,” he finishes, brilliantly.

Lugging Adam's case up onto deck seems like a great idea until he reaches the top of the stairs. His crew are in a knot around the top of the stairs, looking defiant and bitter. The focus of their anger is the small cohort of soldiers that are waiting across the deck, unwilling to venture too far into what is obviously unfriendly territory.

The lieutenant gives him a smart salute. "Captain Allen. His Highness has informed us of what happened. I can only apologise for suggesting that either you or your crew could be involved in such actions."

Kris really wants to punch him, even though it's not the man's fault - this is the plan that Kris agreed to. But Kris hates making Adam into the guilty party, having him treated as such. He doesn't want Adam to have to stand alone in front of the Court, with people questioning his judgment. Not again.

He steps very deliberately away from the soldiers, joining his crew in their silent disapproval. When Adam comes up the stairs he looks _wrecked_ , and the crew all gather round him, shielding him.

Kris asks, "Is Allie alright?"

Adam's face goes a shade paler. "She’s asleep." Kris takes a breath and doesn't reach for Adam like he so badly wants to. Adam loves in this all-encompassing way, stupid and fierce, and Kris wants to soothe him somehow, say, _I know, I know. Me too._

Adam reaches down to the mess of belts at his waist and unhooks something from a chain.

“Here,” he says, holding it out to Kris on his open hand. “Just so you don’t think I’m making off with it.”

Kris looks at the difference cog from what seems like a lifetime ago. Adam kept it. He feels like he’s been punched in the stomach. Adam drops his gaze, something he’s done many times, and Kris wonders why he didn’t see before. The reason Adam can’t let his eyes meet Kris’s is because they betray him.

“Keep it,” Kris says. He curls Adam’s fingers back over the cog.

It has always been easy, disconcertingly easy, to touch Adam, so much so that Kris barely has to think about it most of the time, but this time might be the last. This time he wants to commit every detail to memory and he presses a little harder, focusing on the rough warmth of Adam’s skin beneath his own.

Then he lets his hand fall.

“A piece of the Conway to carry with me,” Adam says, expression still so blank that it could have been painted on. Then he wrenches his eyes up to meet Kris’s and there is a moment of stillness, like the breath before the cry of ‘charge!’ and Kris braces himself for the onslaught.

One of the soldiers coughs, loud in the quiet. They turn toward him, and the look and the silence and the moment are all broken.

“Good luck.” Kris salutes and manages to add, “Sire,” even though he’s sure his voice is giving himself away with the unsaid things crowding round that one syllable. He hopes Adam is as good as he usually is at hearing what Kris isn’t saying.

Adam says, “Thank you,” and then The Prince salutes Kris, formal and foreign.

“This way, Your Highness,” the lieutenant intones, gesturing at the exit.

Adam ignores him. He nods to Kris and the assembled crew, then sweeps down the gangplank. The company of soldiers trails after him looking confused and rather unsure, somehow reminding Kris of large, heavily armed ducklings.

He really needs to get more sleep.

Katy yells some orders and Kris joins in, getting them back underway. He feels like he is watching himself from outside his body, everything very distant until Katy slides her hand into his, and squeezes tight. “Come on, let’s get inside with the others. Things will seem clearer once you’ve had something to eat.”

Most of the crew are in the galley, talking a little too quietly for Kris’s liking. He should be setting a better example, but it’s hard to feel anything but defeated. Like they pushed themselves to beyond exhaustion and got shot at and nearly lost the ship, all for nothing. Adam is still gone and nothing is certain and Kris _really_ hates to lose.

“Soup, Captain?” Scott gently moves Kris’s hands from the table and places a bowl in front of him, the warmth stealing up to Kris’s face.

Matt and Lil are having a conversation over at the next table that makes them both frown, look over at Kris, and then frown even harder. Katy eats her soup and doesn’t try to hide her concern when she catches Kris’s glances across their table.

Kris doesn’t realise that he has stood up until he registers the sound of his chair scraping against the floor.

“I’m going to go check on Allie,” he tells Katy, and everyone else by proxy. He can _feel_ them listening.

“I’m sure she’s fine, she was fast asleep when I looked in on her,” Katy says.

“I know, but I can’t…” Kris can’t stay, he’s not doing anyone any good sitting here, one looking one step away from a breakdown. He can’t fake it, he’s not good enough, he’s not – oh, the irony – he’s not Adam.

“Good work today,” he says loudly. He leaves and almost runs to his cabin, shutting the door behind him as quietly as he can. He considers locking the door but doesn’t, instead turning round and leaning his back against it.

Allie is curled up on Katy’s bed under a pile of blankets, just a covered small shape and a mass of red hair. Kris very carefully lifts the chair up and places it by the side of the bed, close enough that he can hear her breathe, and keeps watch.

He must fall asleep, because when he next looks up it’s getting dark. Kris gets up and turns the lamp on, the ropes that hold the bed up casting long shadows on the wall.

Allie moves her head, revealing her face for a second before she nuzzles back under the blankets. It’s something that Kris has seen Adam do a hundred times, achingly familiar. It’s odd, now, seeing Adam in Allie; he’s got so used to recognising the Allie-things in Adam that it feels backward this way.

It makes him want to hug her tight, wrap her up and promise her that she’ll never come to any harm again. He settles for leaning over and tucking the blanket round her shoulders.

Allie shifts and mutters. Her eyelids flutter a couple of times, and then open.

“Hello,” Kris says, keeping his voice soft.

“Adam?”

“Afraid not. He had to go sort some things out in Court.”

Allie looks at him dazedly from under half-closed eyes for a second, and then she snaps awake. “What?” she asks, sitting up. “Oh my god, I am going to _kill_ him.”

“He had to, Allie. You were asleep, but he had to go.” Kris feels like he’s talking to himself half an hour ago.

“I was asleep because he _drugged_ me, that bastard. I’m going to kill him,” Allie shrieks, and Kris goes cold.

“Drugged you?” he breaks in, because Allie has started on a vivid description of the bodily harm that she is going to inflict on her brother and seems to be building up a head of steam. He puts a placating hand on her arm.

“He must have slipped something into my tea - dammit, I knew it tasted off - a sleeping pill maybe. So I couldn’t stop him,” she says, as if that makes any kind of sense at all.

“What? Why would he do that? He’s gone to tell them about what happened. We made a plan. We go get the prisoners, and in the mean time he goes to the court marshal.” _The sleeping pills Adam got from the Chantier_ , a colder, rational part of his brain thinks, _only they didn’t last as long as he thought they would._

“Court marshal?” Allie’s expression is harsh, worry coiled tightly in every line.

Kris says, soothing as he can, “Because Adam’s not to blame, he’ll be fine. They won’t do anything to him for ordering me to fire. He’ll be _fine_ , Allie. I wouldn’t have let him off the ship, otherwise.” He’s gripping her arm, he realises, and tries to look nonchalant as he lets go.

Allie pushes her hair out of her face and she looks young and far too worn down.

“That is why he would do that to me,” she grinds out, and sighs, long, like she can’t believe the stupidity of the world. “That is exactly why. Because you wouldn’t have let him off the ship if you’d known, and I would have told you. Hell, _I_ wouldn’t have let him off the ship. He’s gone to fall on his sword. Or shoot himself in the foot.”

Kris frowns at her and she makes a dismissive gesture with her hands, one that must be in the goddamn _genes_ or something. “Whichever one is the stupid, pointlessly noble one. The one where they’re going to send him down for treason and Danny will get made Idol. That one.”

Kris’s stomach turns all the way over, he’s sure, a dull, sickening wave of nausea rolling out from there and submerging his whole body.

“But it wasn’t his fault, Allie. They can’t convict him. They won’t, it wouldn’t be fair,” he tells her. He wants to add _but Adam said_ but he already sounds petulant enough.

Allie rolls her eyes, pulling off contemptuous quite well for someone in a nightgown.

“As if that matters. You know how The Mansion works. Besides, Adam hardly has to spin the story at all. You may be the Captain of this ship, but he is your Prince, your Idol, for all you knew. Technically if he had ordered you to shoot that tower…”

“But he didn’t order me, we decided,” Kris insists.

“No one at home knows about the two of you and your alliance thing. He can just tell them what they want to hear and there’s no one there to contradict him. They'll convict him for sure. Make an example of him.”

And then Kris gets it. First Adam gets the Conway as far away from the Mansion as possible while he goes back. Then he tells enough truth to make the doubters believe and Le Renard have an easy job getting rid of him. By the time Kris could even hear about this it would be too late. Gokey is The Idol, The Conway is saved, and Adam is… “What is the punishment for treason? For Princes, that is?”

“The usual,” Allie says, and Kris takes her hand, because the usual is too much to contemplate alone. The mental picture comes all too easily - Adam being led up the stairs, black hood over his head, hands shaking, back straight.

His voice sounds stretched thin as he says, “So you weren’t joking about the sword, then,” and he can’t quite bring himself to look at Allie.

“No,” she chokes out, with a terrible sob of a laugh. She squeezes Kris’s hand and he grips back, unsure what else do to.

“What are we going to do?” Allie asks him, looking up at Kris with big, hopeful eyes. As if he has some sort of answer. If only.

“It’s almost impossibly dangerous to go back now. If we go fetch the prisoners we’d be safe, but by the time we got back Adam would be…” He swallows, hard.

Allie says quietly, “I told you he was stupid,” tucking her hair behind her ear with a resolutely steady hand. “Stupid and noble, but that’s why we love him, I suppose.”

Kris can still feel Adam’s kiss, hidden in his hairline. It had felt like a blessing, but now it feels like goodbye. “I suppose,” he says absently.

“We have to turn round. It’s an awful plan. We have to stop him. Kris?"

He should be angry, he knows he should, because Adam _tricked_ him, used everything he’d ever found out about Kris to manipulate him, picked out all of his blind spots. But he doesn’t. Maybe it’s exhaustion or maybe it’s shock, but Kris feels like he’s watching it all unfold from somewhere outside of himself.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know.”

&&&&&

Katy leans back, enthroned like a queen on the cushioned chair that had been a joint effort between Meg, Matt and Scott. She looks from Kris to Allie, each seated at one end of her bed, and then back again. She’s been doing that all throughout their story, attention flicking back and forth like she isn’t sure who she’s going to have to pull back from the edge. Who will fall first.

“Well, just when I thought things couldn’t get more complicated,” she says, and sighs. “That _idiot_ , god.”

Allie looks extremely vindicated. It was Allie who made Kris go get Katy, going as far as stumbling to the door herself even though she only had a nightgown on.

Katy says, “I mean, we always knew that he could be...” she waves her hands around.

“Absolutely. I think it’s the Prince thing,” Matt agrees, though with what Kris can’t quite tell. “It makes him all...”

“Yes, exactly, what’s the word, something like altruistic only stupider,” Katy says.

“Chivalrous?” Matt offers, as Allie frowns and leans forwards like she wants in on their act.

“People,” Kris snaps. Everyone turns to look at him. And, oh yes, how could he forget. Adam may have his spotlight effect but Kris can do this, without even thinking, take the attention of a room and hold it. He is captain, cause and effect of his ability to do that. The certainty of it is in his bones, and just like that he comes back to himself, like an inhale of breath.

He says, “This is the choice that Adam has left us with. We either go back and get caught up in the trial ourselves, or we fly on and leave Adam to go to trial alone, possibly to be executed.” He has to force it out but he’s saying it. It’s reality. “And that’s not a call I want to make.”

Allie stares at him, aghast. “Kris,” she says, very soft, and the ‘s’ is dragged out with disbelief, disappointment. Like he’s letting her down. Fuck. “It’s _Adam._ ”

Obviously it’s Adam.

Kris isn’t sure how it’s happened but he is sure that he’s in the situation he’s worked so hard to avoid. Where he _wants_. God, he should know better than this, because he knows what he’s like when he wants something, he’s stupid and reckless. All the things he cannot be, because he is _Captain_ and he can’t be compromised.

But it’s Adam, and he already is.

He says, “My crew, their careers, their lives. They have families. God knows, I want to turn us around just so as I can find Adam and punch him in his stupid face, but... It’s not about what I want. We’ve already pushed our luck beyond it’s limit...”

Matt snorts. “Really, Kristopher Allen? Do I need to go through all of the many, _many_ times that you’ve gone past the limit of our luck and into a place where you have no choice but to make your own. We all know what we’ve signed on for, what we risk by being in the Fleet. And if we have to do something dangerous to rescue the Commander from _certain death_ than so be it. You know it’s not right to leave him there. You’ve always said we should listen to our instincts, and I’m pretty sure what yours say about Adam.”

“And you’re the one who’s always said that flying is all person should ever need,” Kris snaps. It’s all such a mess, this underhand war, pulling at threads until the world that you thought you knew unravels before your eyes. Just when you think you’ve got a handle on it, everything shifts again like shadows, impossible to grasp.

And then Kris realises what he’s said. Flying is all you need, forget falling for someone, _that’s_ what Matt’s always said.

Kris says, “Um.” He turns to glance at Allie before he can stop himself, and she’s got her hands clasped over her mouth.

Katy frowns at him, then turns to look at Matt. He raises his eyebrows and makes a small, frustrated gesture with his hands.

Katy says, “I know...” and sighs.

Matt shakes his head at her, which seems to conclude whatever silent conversation they were having. He turns back and says, “If you thought we didn’t know, you’ve been a lot less subtle than you thought. Plus kind of stupid.” He’s slouching in his chair, as always, knowing Kris far too well and too easily.

“Matt,” Katy says reproachfully. She’s giving Kris her best pitying smile and Allie is staring at him and it’s _awful_. Kris feels like a spectacle, like all his secrets have been put on show for the world to gawk at. A study in mortification, starring Kristopher Allen and his stupid, stupid feelings.

He says, “Well, I’m glad it’s all so clear to you.” And maybe it comes out a little mean. He leans his head back against the wall. “This is exactly why I’ve... Why I’ve always tried not to...” He can make himself say that Adam might die but not how he feels about him, and isn’t that telling. And horrible. “I don’t know what I should do. We might as well just fly in circles.”

“Well, that’s because your plan has always been ‘Don’t fall in love,’ which was never going to be a workable way of living. And now it feels like your worst case scenario, a choice between your man or your ship, and it’s making you think in absolutes,” Katy says. Kris opens his eyes again, and she looks calm and maybe a little sad. Katy has never laughed at Matt’s jokes about love, never joined in the conversations that follow his declarations about not needing anything but their ship. “You want to do something stupid for him, but you aren’t. You made that call. There, dilemma over.”

Kris says, “Oh, so it’s that simple.”

Katy shrugs. “If you want it to be. And then we can actually do something about this.” She reaches out her hand, starts to lean forwards and then winces. Kris moves to the very edge of the bed and takes her hand in his as quickly as he can, so that she doesn’t injure herself just trying to comfort him. She says, “I don’t know how many times we have to tell you this, Kit, but you are not by yourself in this, like some... some lone wolf of the skies.”

Kris laughs at that. “Okay, tell me what you think,” he says, and he feels a little stupid, but that’s insignificant compared to how _grateful_ he is.

Matt says, “I’m fairly sure that I speak for the crew when I say that the Commander is one of us. He’s the Conway’s, and he should be returned to her. It’s not just you who feels that way.”

“Oh!” Allie says. “Sorry, I didn’t want to intrude...”

“I wondered why you were being so quiet,” Kris says.

Allie hushes him. “It’s not really my place and obviously I’m so, so biased, but...” She beams at Matt. “I just. I don’t think you know how much it would mean to Adam to hear you say that.”

“It’s true,” Katy says. “So we have to find a way of getting him back. But we can do that without charging in all guns blazing, you know. I’d suggest putting the ship down somewhere on the coast, just a village somewhere, and then sending a small group to capital by land. Then no one will be expecting them, so they can get into the Court unnoticed and hopefully unharmed.”

“No member of my crew is breaking into the Court,” Kris says firmly. “No, Katy, don’t... I want to keep you out of it for as long as possible.” He squeezes her hand. “It’s a good idea, though. I could do it. One person won’t be noticed and if I’m caught, well, I haven’t put anyone but myself in danger. I’ll go.”

“ _We’ll_ go,” Allie says. Kris turns to say, _no, are you crazy_ , but she holds up one hand imperiously. “I’m the Princess Select, Kris. I’m not under investigation for anything. In fact Lord Gokey has done nothing but play up my innocence. So you won’t have to break into anything with me around. I can order the guards to do pretty much anything I want.” She tilts her head. “Didn’t you know that?”

“Allie, I...” Kris starts, but she’s glaring at him, hard edged. “Do you know where they keep prisoners? Do you know how often the guard changes? Do you know how to get into the Mansion without having to state your business to an official? How many unlocked doors do you think there are in the place, because I know where all of them are and trust me, you won’t find them without me.”

Matt says, “Her highness makes a good point, Kris. Several, actually. But I really don’t like the idea of the two of you going off to take on the Court on your own.”

“Neither do I,” Kris admits. “But it’s the best we can do at short notice. This way only one person is in possible danger. And if anything goes wrong, well, then it’s up to you to decide what the next step is.”

“We’re the rescue party’s rescue party,” Katy says with a sigh. “Oh, great.”

&&&&&

No one stops them at the port, the street, or the Palace gate. Kris half wants someone to try, because he's been feeling angrier with every step and flooring some idiot would be just the right kind of release. This morning Katy had helped Allie twist her hair into some kind of complex, formal thing on top of her head, and she is wearing one of Lil's best dresses so she looks every inch her Royal Highness - unobtainably beautiful. It's damn well impossible not to think about Adam, and each time fear twists Kris's insides into a thousand knots like a line left loose in the wind.

He comes up short when a voice says, "Captain Allen? I’ve been expecting you..." Minister Cowell gives him a once over, as if he's weighing up whether Kris is worth another sentence. Whenever Kris has spoken with the Minister, he always seems to be looking at something slightly more interesting just over Kris’s shoulder. "And her Highness, naturally. This way, come along." He sweeps them both along after him by sheer force of personality. Or possibly ego.

"Wait," Kris says, as soon as he realises what's happening. "We were -"

"Come along, Kristopher," Allie interrupts, taking his arm. She has her head held high, and Kris knows that she plays this game better than he does, but he still wants to tell her to be careful with this one, he's _tricky_.

The Minister slows his pace a little to match the Courtiers walking beside them in the corridor.

“Kristopher, you’re not stupid. You didn’t think that you could land a Fleet ship within 50 miles of here and I wouldn’t find out,” he says. Kris hadn’t really thought much beyond getting Adam the hell out of there, but he should have known better. The Minister borders on omnipotent, sometimes.

"I'm sure that you weren't thinking of going to see Lord Gokey without discussing it with me first. Although I'm sure he has many things of interest which he would wish to share with you." Minister Cowell looks at them both with his own strange brand of intense disinterest. "Or that he could be persuaded to."

Allie says, "Things pertaining to my... to the upcoming trial, perhaps?" She's not like the Allie Kris knows when she talks to him.

"Perhaps."

Kris tries to keep in mind that the Minister was not on their list of enemies. He doesn't have to like the man, or even trust him, just has to be on his side. And also very ready to get both of them the hell out of here if he so much as _blinks_ threateningly.

“I can’t be seen to be interfering with a legal trial. But then, our friends should not have been interfering with Fleet orders, the taking of prisoners or the succession. At least not without my permission.”

The Minister’s smile verges on mischievous and it’s suddenly easier to remember that Kris has never actually thought of him as a _bad_ person.

A few people give Allie a puzzled look, which she doesn’t return. Allie says, “But you can help us.” Kris is waiting for the questioning inflection, but it never comes. She has fallen into step with the Minister so easily, a different person in a whole different world, and she owns every inch of it.

“Only Lord Gokey has both the knowledge and the key to where Adam is being kept. I am one of a select few who can get you in to see him. I am sure that you will find a way to make the situation mutually beneficial," The Minister adds.

Being circumspect is probably a good thing, but it would be very like Minister Cowell to talk like this just for the sake of it. He could just say that he is taking them to Daniel as a favour, but oh no, he has to be an unrelenting git.

"I'm sure we can," Kris says, fixing Minister Cowell with a cool, challenging stare. “If you stop talking and start helping us.” A very large part of him is sure that this is one of the worst ideas he has ever had and they are never going to find his body.

The Minister raises his eyebrows. "Well, obviously you will still need to convince Daniel to tell you, and not attract unwelcome attention as you go, but I know you both, and I would not allow you to try if I thought you would fail." Kris has never heard anyone go from disdain to grudging approval in the space of one sentence before.

“We can do that,” he says. There’s simply no way that they are leaving without Adam. Allie leans into him.

The Minister stops a man walking by, seemingly at random, and murmurs something into his ear.

He turns back to Kris and Allie. “The guards between the general Court and Lord Gokey’s residence will be called away. Once you are there, however, you will be on your own. Even I have limits.”

Allie says, “Well I never. And where can we find _Daniel_?” Names have power, Kris knows.

“The State Visiting Rooms,” The Minister says, disdainfully.

Allie sucks in a breath. “That _bastard_ , those are for the Idol to use. Oh, I’m going to...” She looks around at the courtiers, the Minister. “Um. Yes.”

Minister Cowell actually smiles, then. “Please,” he says. “Don’t hold back on my account, your highness. I take it this means you know the way.”

&&&&&

Lord Gokey is sitting behind a desk covered in paper. He carries on writing, not looking up as he says, “Yes?”

“If this is your attempt to appear busy and important, it’s fairly poor,” Allie says, and that gets his attention.

“Allison?” he splutters. “What are you doing here? I sent you away, safe...”

Allie leans on the desk with one hand. “We’re here for my brother.” She shakes her head. “Honestly Danny, I know you’ve never liked him, but don’t you think this is going a bit too far?” She doesn’t say anything about the house that he trapped her in.

Kris strides across the room and holds out his hand. “I’m Captain Kristopher Allen of the Conway. I think you’ve heard of me?” He smiles pleasantly. “I know you’ve heard of my ship, because how else could you order it to be shot down?”

Lord Gokey says, “Captain Allen, I can assure you that I did no such thing.” He sits up a little straighter. “Furthermore, I am the Regent, I suggest you talk to me with a little more respect before I have you arrested. I don’t know what this nonsense is about your ship...”

“It’s not nonsense,” Allie interrupts. “Dan, either you’re lying or being lied to. Admiral Warwick ordered the Conway to be fired upon on sight, a ship carrying our people, your _family_. And that’s after they sent mercenaries after them, paid for by the state.”

Lord Gokey looks panicked, just for a second, before whatever horrible training they give royalty kicks in and his faces goes blank and inoffensive. “Well, I certainly knew nothing of this. That would not be the kind of action that I would sanction.”

“But you’re in charge, aren’t you?” Kris says, making the most of his standing position to look down at him. “Here you are, in the Idol’s rooms, all set to take the throne. Acting like you already have.”

Lord Gokey fiddles with his pen and seems to come to a decision in his head. “Sometimes I just sign things,” he says. “I didn’t even... I thought that Adam would stay fighting his stupid war and I could just start running the Kingdom properly. And then everything got complicated and they said, they promised they’d handle it. So, I just sort of... let them.” He turns to Allie. “I didn’t know, Allison, you have to believe me. There are letters in my desk that will prove it was all them, Le Renard. I just signed them.”

“Good. Now we’ve got that over with, tell us where Prince Adam is,” Kris says, and slides his Acoustic out of his belt. He’s done with this.

“I did what I had to,” Gokey protests. "We can't have his sort in charge. Put the gun away, Captain Allen, you’re not going to shoot a member of the royal family."

“Oh, I would,” Kris promises. “I’ve shot better men than you to protect what’s mine.” It’s only the truth, but that’s often the thing that scares people the most, in Kris’s experience.

Lord Gokey’s eyes go wide and horrified. He reaches into his pocket, slides a key across the desk. “That’s for the door. Everyone thinks he’s in the tower, but that’s just a diversion. To be on the safe side. He’s in the gunpowder room on this floor, it’s...”

“Two rights and the third door on the left,” Allie interrupts, proprietorially.

Gokey gives him a desperate look. “Don’t, please. You have to understand what Adam’s like. The way he was with that boy, who knows what the Court would be like with him in charge. You’re a good man, Captain Allen, a military man, a godly man. Surely you can see it would be best for people like us to be in charge.”

Kris looks at Lord Gokey, anchored to his desk, lingering distaste and fear still on his face from the thought of Adam. Is this the mundane face of evil, he wonders, scared men doing stupid things.

“If you think we’re anything alike, think again,” he says, because - screw polite and the consequences. “I could never even come close to what you did.”

Gokey flinches.

"We’re leaving now," Kris says, tiredly. "I really don't want to have to look at your face any longer." He feels the weight of Lord Gokey's betrayed gaze all the way to the door.

The door which Allie leads him to is in a plain back corridor. Clearly no one comes this way very often. The key that Daniel Gokey threw at him feels heavy in Kris's hand as he tries it in the lock. This could still be a double cross.

It opens onto a small passage, and the door at the end has a bar across it. Kris doesn’t think, just takes a run and barrels into it. The small wooden panel in the top buckles and falls out, into the room behind it. And, thank god, Adam is really in there standing in a defensive stance just to the side of the door.

“What are you doing here?” he says. Adam appears to be uninjured, at least, but something seems wrong. And then Kris notices it - they’ve taken his Upgrade.

“We’re the rescue crew,” Allie explains. The rest of the door is metal, the gap that was the wooden panel is too small to fit a person through, and the bar across the door is iron. Kris considers the door for a moment, but all he can really think about is how someone must have forced the buckles open, taken the Upgrade and left Adam there, defenceless.

“Those brackets holding the bar look fairly new, see, they’re only attached to the wall with basic one screws,” Allie points out. Kris nods, and pushes down on the bar. It shouldn't take too much effort to wrench it out of the wall. Adam comes up to the door, still a little wide eyed.

Kris says, “We can get you out of here. It’ll take a little time but it’s going to be a really good rescue, any minute now.”

Adam stares at them some more, and then he says, “This was not the plan.”

Allie assesses Adam for a second and then puts her arm through the gap and shoves him hard.

“That’s because, Adam, it was the _worst_ plan in the history of the whole entire known world.”

Adam gives Kris a wounded look.

“You’ll get no sympathy here,” Kris says. He’s only sorry he didn’t get the first push.

Adam reaches out for Allie, who ignores him in favour of studying the lock on the door.

Kris feels so angry he’s not quite sure what to do with himself. “Let’s get you out of here, then we can talk,” he tells Adam, focusing on the bars, the surety of cold metal.

Adam says, “You’re actually going to break me out? Do you know how much trouble you’ll get in if you’re caught? What about the Conway?”

Kris says, “Well, you should have thought about that before you decided to run off and put us all in a position where this was the best option. We aren’t doing this for _fun_ , Adam. We’re doing this because you made a really stupid choice.”

“Are you shouting at me? You hate shouting and you’re shouting at me for trying to stop you getting killed?” Adam asks, aghast, which is the outside of enough.

“No, I am not shouting at you. There can’t be any shouting or yelling or anything like that because no one is supposed to know that we’re here, you idiot.” Kris realises that he is gripping one of the bars so hard that his knuckles have gone white.

Adam huffs, angry and confused looking. He says, “But you are not-yelling in a somewhat scary way. Kris, you can’t be…”

Kris lets go of the bar and takes a step backwards, because being this close to Adam is a very, very bad idea. “I can’t be what, Adam? Can’t be angry with you for deciding to sacrifice yourself? For drugging your sister and lying to me? For nearly getting executed? I beg to differ.” His voice is a glass shard whisper by the end, thin and cutting.

Allie has one hand on Kris’s arm and one holding Adam’s through the gap, a buffer zone. Her gaze slides away from Adam, as if it hurts too much to see him and remember.

“I’m sorry,” Adam says, desperately. “Allie, I’m so sorry for that.” He puts his hand over hers. “But it was the only way. You were all there, on the Conway, and it was all my fault. How would you have felt in my place? Wouldn’t you have done whatever it took to stop the most important people in your life from being harmed?” He runs his fingers through his hair.

Kris’s heart doesn’t break, but there’s a crack, perhaps. Stupid, he reminds himself, stupid and damaging.

“And how would you feel if one of the most important people in your life tried to die for you?” he asks, simply.

“Oh,” Adam says.

“Indeed,” Kris says. He leans on the locking bar again, and it starts to move.

“Kris…” Adam starts. Kris looks up at Adam’s face, the upturned palm, the lack of Upgrade. It’s all terrifyingly vulnerable. Adam swallows and says, “I hope that you have a plan from here on in.”

Allie says, “Not really,” adding her weight to the bar. The left bracket gives a little more, lurching out of the wall.

“Well, Daniel said he was keeping all his correspondence in his desk. There’s got to be something there we can use. Could you get me there?” Kris asks. He keeps forgetting not to look at Adam; his eyes drag back every time. There had been a point, just a few seconds, when he had been certain that they were too late, and there would be nothing left of Adam but a name, a missing book and the memory of a chance not taken.

“Of course we can,” Adam says easily. “Oh, wait. Where?”

“The State Rooms,” Allie tells him, and they exchange a look that promises bloody vengeance.

The bar finally gives way under their combined weight, with a startling screech of metal. Kris wrenches the door open and then he and Adam just stand there, looking at each other. Allie pushes him out of the doorway with a deep sigh, punches Adam on the arm and then flings her arms around him. He picks her up and spins her, and when they stop Kris can see that Adam is saying, “Sorry, sorry, Allie, sorry.”

She hushes him, smiling up at him before she steps away.

“Come on,” she says. She takes Kris’s hand and the three of them set off at a run.  
They tear through ornately decorated corridors, the sound of their feet muffled by the plush carpet. Kris lets himself stay two steps behind Adam and Allie, because every turn they take looks the same to him, whereas they are barely looking around, guided by a lifetime’s certainty.

Adam stops, pulling Allie up short by the arm, and Kris clatters into them like something out of a bad farce, unable to fight momentum and hitting Adam’s shoulder hard. He winces. Adam turns his head to smile at him, fond and exasperated, and they could be on the deck of the Conway right now, with Kris being hopelessly poor at protocol and Adam pretending to mind. Something in Kris’s chest goes tight.

Adam places a finger to his lips theatrically, leans round the corner and then beckons them forward. There is a guard with his back to them at the other end of the corridor, a dark silhouette against the white and gold of the Mansion. Adam reaches behind a curtain – gold embroidered, of course – and something slides with the faintest of clicks. Kris’s heart thuds in his ears until they reach the curtain and slip behind it. Adam is waiting there in a dim, dusty passage, and Allie pushes the door shut behind them.

“Told you we knew a shortcut,” she whispers. “There shouldn’t be any more guards to contend with.” She looks disturbingly pleased with herself.

“Shouldn’t be?” Kris hisses back, because five seconds ago the guard could had a clear shot at Adam. He doesn’t say this though, because Allie’s hands are twisting together nervously, and Adam doesn’t need to hear that either, shoulders set rigid as he climbs the twisting staircase in front of them. Everyone has coping mechanisms; there’s no need to ruin Allie’s.

They climb in silence for what seems an age, passing doors set into the side of the wooden stairs that creak beneath them, the air thick with dust that clings to Adam’s hair and jacket, fading the black into misty grey.

“Neil used to use this to sneak us out of family breakfasts,” Allie says, voice soft. “Father was always doing paperwork. It was deadly dull.”

Adam glances back at them and says, “We used to pick the locks on all the rooms in between for fun,” with a look that goes wistful at the corners of his eyes. “We were good at it, too. The three of us - a proper little criminal gang, breaking out.”

They still haven’t talked about - it, them, anything - and it’s still a hugely inappropriate time, and Allie is still _right there_ , but all Kris wants to do right now is take Adam’s hand and promise him the sky.

They reach a door set in a brick wall, and Adam gives it a thoughtful once over.

“This is the one, right, Al?” he asks, and she nods.

“It seems identical to all the other doors we’ve passed to me, I don’t know how you two do it, ” Kris tells them, and they both preen a little.

“You just have to know what you’re looking for. We’ve had a lot of practice,” Adam says graciously, a dust-covered diplomat.

Adam presses the side of the door and it rolls away, revealing a tapestry of a hunting scene. He and Allie exchange perfect, matching smiles of success.

Kris had thought that the parts of the Mansion he’d seen before were ornate, but this corridor takes the word to a whole new ridiculous level. There is colour everywhere: precious stones set into the windows, gold on the light fixtures, and intricate tapestries over every inch of wall space. This is what Adam and Allie used to escape from - this dream of a place.

There’s one door, carved with crowns, sceptres and curling vines, and set with a five-cog tumbler lock, by the looks of things. Kris has never seen one on anything other than a safe.

“I don’t doubt that you are both very talented lock-picks, but how are we going to get past this?” he asks, the urge to laugh bubbling up inside him. They could have come all this way to sit in a beautiful corridor and watch the light refract through the diamonds in the windows.

Adam reaches out and twists the combination lock. “I’m the Heir Apparent. Perks include knowing the over-ride code,” he says, and unlocks the door.

The door opens into a small reception area, the kind that Kris has sat in many times. It’s the kind meant to intimidate, with lots of sombre, rich furniture and pointedly uncomfortable chairs. Adam goes over to one of the three doors and tries the handle. It swings open, and Allie goes forward and takes his hand. They both look like they’d rather be anywhere else in the world right now.

Kris follows them into an enormous room dominated by a giant four-poster bed. The bed must be the size of most of the rooms that Kris has ever slept in, and he just stops and stares for a moment.

“It’s always been my dream bed. I only hope Gokey hasn’t been sleeping in it,” Adam says. Kris looks over just as he drops Allie’s hand, looking pained. “That would be the final straw.”

“Oh, because trying to kill you wasn’t enough,” Kris says, and Adam laughs, rich and lovely in the stillness. It feels like a lifetime since Kris heard Adam make such a carefree sound. He laughs a little too, letting himself smile properly at Adam for the first time since the, well, the not-yelling.

Adam’s expression changes into one that Kris normally associates with complicated mechanisms, wonder and want and happiness, and Kris thinks if they could only have five minutes not lurching from mortal peril to imminent death…

Allie calls, “Do you have a key for the desk?”

“I’m afraid not,” Adam says. They both hurry over to the large - of course it’s large and pointlessly over-decorated - desk, which is locked with a padlock.

Allie lifts the lock onto her palm and gives it a desultory look. She slides a hairpin out of her hair and goes to work.

“My sister - princess and criminal genius,” Adam says, as the desk opens up under her fingers. Allie stretches up and kisses him on the cheek, and they all lean in to study the contents of the desk, grinning at each other.

“How convenient. All my very least favourite people in one room.”

Kris whips round, perfectly in sync with Allie and Adam, and there are guns being pointed at them. Minister Murdoch is standing in the open doorway with two guards, a truly horrific smile stretching his face. He sweeps a look across the three of them and says, “Oh, I wouldn’t bother with resistance. Allison, that is a hairpin.”

Kris looks at Allie, who really is holding out her hairpin, and doesn’t move his hand from the top of his Acoustic. The two guards in the room edge a little closer together, rifles steadily aimed in their direction. The Minister looks over the array of metal and sniffs, “Captain Allen, my men would shoot you all down before you could even aim, however ‘quick on the draw’ you may be.” He says the words like they’re made up, like Kris hasn’t had to learn to be fast with his gun to save lives. Like this is a game. Kris looks at that mocking smile again and decides that he was right to call Minister Murdoch crazy.

"So, that confirms something for me. How is heading up Le Renard working out for you?" Adam says. His tone is light and conversational, one for afternoon tea, not encounters with firing squads.

"Rather well,” the Minister replies. “I see that your wish to be executed for treason is also progressing nicely." Adam scowls, and Kris feels that cold clutch of fear again.

Kris says, "Daniel Gokey knows we have Adam. And he knows all about your schemes now. He's not going to let the trial go ahead."

"Oh really? You honestly thought Daniel would support you over me? Who do you think told me you were all here," the Minister says, talking as if they're all a little slow and he's already bored of them.

"That damn _coward_ ," Allie bites out.

The Minister tuts. "Language, Allison. What would your father say? Oh dear, no."

Kris has never known hatred like this, burning like acid and white hot metal. But then, that's what the Minister wants, this old man in wire rimmed glasses with a mind like the worst sort of weapon. He wants them to hate, and be consumed by it.

"And I think you'll find that Daniel has made the smart decision. Smart people support those with the power to get them what they want. And considering I could have you all killed at this very second..."

Adam says, “There’s no need for this, Minister, really. Stand down the guards. We’ll cooperate.”

The Minister waves an idle hand. “You say that now. But give you five minutes and it’s all irritating survival and breaking out of jail and the like. I fear that it would be too much trouble. You always were far more trouble than your _type_ ,” the Minister gives Adam an ugly look, “is worth.” Adam’s face sets hard and he clenches his fist. Allie steps forward a little.

Minister Murdoch chuckles, utterly devoid of warmth. “His Highness does not want you dead, Princess. Nevertheless, I suggest you don’t try anything too stupid. My guards can do enough damage without putting your life at risk.”

Adam says, “Allie, just…” She turns to him, eyes huge and scared and so very blue. “Be smart,” he whispers, voice catching at the end.

Kris feels helpless anger rise up, and one finger strays down the handle of his Acoustic.

“Carter!” The Minister snaps, and one of the guards straightens. “Go take Captain Allen’s gun. He looks like he’s considering some sort of foolishness.”

The guard, Carter, hands his weapon to the Minister and approaches Kris. They’ve clearly been trained well; Kris could have tried to take the rifle from him as he reached to pick Kris’s Acoustic out of his belt. But there’s nothing he can do with two guns pointing at him from the other side of the room. At this range a rifle shot would go right through a person.

“Now, bring the Princess over here.”

Adam looks murderous as he watches the guard drag Allie back, locking her arm behind her with a vicious twist. Kris leans into Adam slightly and feels him shaking a little, the anger only just contained beneath his skin.

The Minister’s expression is one of perfectly composed savagery as he says, “Carter, take the Princess to her room and lock her in. My Lord Daniel - that is, His Highness - will want her...” he pauses, watching Adam’s face very closely, “pristine.”

Kris grips Adam’s sleeve, trying to communicate a warning through the cloth. Allie is marched out of the room, her face schooled blank, but there is no colour in it. The Minister lets his mouth turn up into a supercilious smile, directed right at Adam, who tenses up.

“He wants to get a rise out of you, don’t let him,” Kris whispers, even as he wants to punch that awful leer right off the man’s face.

“Less of that, I think,” Minister Murdoch says. He gestures at Kris with the rifle he’s holding, finger right on the trigger. “Over by the bed. Slowly, now, hands in front of you.” Kris untangles his fingers from Adam’s coat, coming away grimy with dust, and Adam moves, cut short, like he was about to follow Kris but decided against it. He gives Kris a look out the corner of his eye, serious like the one he gave Allie, a _be smart, be safe_ look.

Kris edges over to the foot of the bed, one of the guards tracking his movement with his rifle, eyes narrowing over the barrel as he watches Kris. "Stop there" the Minister orders. The guard throws something and Kris catches it automatically. It's a pair of handcuffs. He looks up at the Minister questioningly. "To the post, Captain. Come along now, it's not difficult."

Kris allows himself a glance at Adam, just enough to see the defiant tilt of his head in profile. Kris puts his hand out and it doesn't shake. He attaches himself to the carved post slowly and deliberately - he figures no sudden moves is probably the order of the day. He leaves his stronger arm free, though, just in case.

“And now you to the right hand post, your highness,” the Minister says. “Can’t have you planning some dramatic manoeuvre. I can practically _see_ that faux-heroic part of you just longing to rush my guard and take his rifle.”

Adam walks past Kris to the other bed post and locks his right wrist to it. The bed is so large that even if Kris stretched all the way out he wouldn’t be able to reach Adam now.

“You can go, Simms,” the Minister says. “I think I can manage things from here.” The guard bows before he leaves, and it makes Kris feel sick. He may not know much about protocol, but he’s pretty sure you aren’t supposed to bow to members of the Court. The message behind the gesture is clear. This man is in charge.

The Minister surveys them. “Yes, this is just how I wanted it. My merry band of troublemakers, now divided and quite at my mercy.” He breathes out. “I could have had Simms shoot you then and there, but there’s something very pleasing about having this much power alone. Yes. Very satisfying. Besides, it wouldn’t fit in with the narrative I’ve been preparing, the one where you are the villains and I get to play at being the hero.”  
Kris wants to say, but no one will believe you, but he’s not sure that’s true any more.

The Minister says, "It goes something like this. The two of you come up here looking for His Highness because you're hellbent on assassination,and only my timely intervention stops you killing our beloved new monarch." His voice is singsong sweet, as if he's telling children's stories. It's possibly the most unsettling thing Kris has heard in his life. "I have to shoot you both, sadly, but at least the Idol will be safe."

"This really isn't necessary. You have our weapons and we're already on trial," Kris says. He knows there's probably no reasoning with the man, but he can't just stand there, cuffed to a _bedpost_ of all things.

"I think I'll be the judge of what's necessary." The Minister hefts the rifle in his hands a little - Kris really hates it when there are guns being welded by people that aren't himself - and raises an eyebrow. “You, for example. I’m not sure that I’d judge you _necessary_."

"Sir," Adam breaks in sharply.

"Ah yes, the errant prince. You have something to say? Do you really think, after everything that you've done, you're in a position to bargain?"

"No. I know there's nothing I can... You can do what you want with me," Adam says, voice low and rough, a patch job of normality. "But the Captain here," he gestures at Kris, the movement jerky, "he hasn't done anything to you. Just let him go. Please."

It's the "please" that undoes Kris. He reaches out blindly for Adam's hand, brushing the very ends of his fingers, and hangs on, bending so their hands are linked, fingertip to fingertip.

The Minister’s expression shifts to uncomfortably speculative. "Not only traitors but degenerates, too," he spits out. "Oh, I think I will enjoy this." He leans on the door frame, casual stance and mad eyes and restless fingers on the trigger.

Adam's pull on Kris's fingers gets harder, as if he wants to grip his hand but can't. Kris risks looking at Adam. He’s staring ahead, right down the barrel of the rifle being pointed at him, head tilted up defiantly, his profile as jarringly handsome as ever. He turns his head towards Kris, eyes brilliant blue and hopeless. And Kris can't see that expression on Adam, he _can't_ , so he takes the coward's way out and looks away.

Minister Murdoch stares at Kris for a second, disgust clear on his face, sharpening as he transfers his gaze to Adam. "It's tempting to shoot your Captain first and watch you suffer it," he says viciously.

Adam's gasp is like a grenade pin dropping in the silence.

Minister Murdoch looks triumphant at the hit. He says, "But no. I've been waiting too long for this."

He takes a few steps forwards, aims for Adam. Kris jerks forward as the gunshot rings out. Adam's hand falls from his and all Kris can think is, _No_.

Minister Murdoch falls forward. In the doorway is Allie, steadying Kris's Acoustic on her arm, just like he taught her to. She looks at the body on the floor.

"I think he's dead," she says in a monotone that sounds nothing like her usual voice. "Adam?"

Kris looks, prepared for the worst. Adam is leaning away, like he'd tried to throw himself out of the way of a bullet but couldn't because his right arm, the arm that should be a weapon, is a bind, instead. He can't see Adam's face, just black hair, black jacket. Black, so as not to show the blood, Kris's brain offers.

Then Adam straightens up. "I'm okay," he says, shakily, and Kris could throw up in relief. Allie walks carefully around the body. She’s utterly composed until Adam reaches out for her and Kris sees her lip tremble as she is pulled into a one-armed hug. They cling to each other for a second, Adam with his eyes shut tight, breathing into her hair.

"Is he dead?" she asks.

Adam opens his eyes and says, "Definitely," almost instantly. Allie nods, and Kris feels proud and heartbroken all at once. He watches Adam stroke her hair, only the once, and is glad he can't see the expression on Adam's face. His baby sister.

"How did you even get out? What about the guard?" Adam asks.

"Oh, he’s unconscious. He underestimated me," Allie says, with a wobbly smile. "I've been picking these locks all my life, it didn’t take me long to get out of the room they put me in. Um. Then the bust of Great-great Aunt Cynthia turned out to be a surprisingly effective weapon." She turns in Adam’s arms to face Kris. “And then I saw that he still had your gun...” Kris smiles helplessly at her.

Allie lets go of her brother and rushes to hug Kris, and he holds her as tight as he can.

"You were perfect, Allie-girl," he tells her fiercely.

She looks up at him, eyes still shock-wide, all pupil. "It was my turn," she says, and Kris couldn't love her more. "Perfect," he repeats.

Allie leans into him again and puts her head on his shoulder.

Kris sees the Minister's body again, blood pooling underneath him on the floor. The hole in his back is right over where his heart would have been. Part of Kris wants to laugh. It's possible that he's in shock too. He doesn't know what might happen if he looks at Adam, so he focuses in on Allie.

Kris says, "Allie, I need you to see if the Minister has the keys to our cuffs, okay?" He hates asking, but he doesn't want to leave it so that Adam has to. Allie swallows. He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and locks eyes with her. "I know, darling. You can do it, though."

He reaches out and Adam catches his hand again, both of them shaking almost too much to keep hold.

Allie scrubs at her eyes with her hands and tilts her head determinedly, an exact likeness of her brother. She walks across and with one finger pulls at the Minister's coat pocket, only looking at the body out of the corner of her eye. When she holds up a set of keys they jangle in her hand. She takes them over to Adam and begins to sort through, fumbling a few times. Allie tries a key in the lock and nearly drops the whole lot when it slides in.

Kris hears the sound of Adam’s cuffs being unlocked and pulls, Adam stumbling into him, Kris's back hitting the bed hard. He buries his face in Adam's shoulder, his one free hand sliding under Adam's jacket to tangle in his shirt, skin warm underneath the material. _Warm, alive, safe_ , his mind repeats. Adam curls over Kris, fingers gripping bruising-hard at his arm and his hip.

Kris feels the handcuffs fall away from his aching wrist, and Allie move away, but everything else seems distant and strange; all he can see and feel and smell is Adam. The buttons on Adam's coat are pressing into his chest, and his heart is pounding in his ears like a gunshot, that gunshot, over and over.

"I thought he'd shot you," he confesses. Adam leans away so that Kris can see his face, and it should be easier to breathe now, except Adam's focus is all on Kris, so intent that Kris forgets how to think.

He brushes Adam's hair away from his eyes, thumb lingering on the curve of his brow, the soft skin at the outer reaches of his eye. Something shatters in Adam's eyes. He says, "Kris, he was going to, _Kris_ ," broken and helpless and not like Adam at all.

"I thought you were..." Kris says, but he can't bring himself to say dead. So Kris kisses him, fast and hard and a little angry. Adam's mouth is warm and desperate under his, a hard press of lips, a terrible kiss, and he says, "Kris," again, into his mouth. They’re pressed together too tightly to fix the angle, so Kris is scraping his lip over skin and stubble, and Adam is clutching his arm hard enough that it _hurts_. Kris bites into Adam’s mouth, still too stunned and mixed up for any kind of finesse, but it doesn’t matter. It's Adam.

They both gasp for breath at the same time, everything jumping back into bright lights and reality. Adam's eyes look huge and startled, and Kris says, "This can't be a shock, surely,” and then they are both laughing. Kris feels himself sliding down the post, taking Adam with him until they are crouching on the floor, knees tangled together and his throat hurts from laughing and he can't stop.

"I think we've gone mad," Adam manages to get out between giggles, resting his weight on Kris's bent knees, tears running down his face.

"Just when I thought this couldn't get any more inappropriate," Allie says. She's sitting at the foot of the bed, a blanket round her shoulders. "I'm not sure if this is better or worse than the kissing."

Adam holds out one arm and she slides down so that they are all wrapped up in a clumsy embrace. Kris feels the shaking start as they all start to breathe normally again. Allie shivers and pulls the blanket closer in around them.

"Why am I so cold all of a sudden?" she asks, leaning into Kris.

"It's the adrenaline come down," Kris says. "Captain Clarkson always used to says it's like finally taking a really long piss after wanting one for ages. It's so good it almost makes you dizzy and then you just feel empty."

Allie giggles and Adam shakes his head. "Okay, we're done. Inappropriateness threshold reached. Now what?"

As one they look at the body on the floor, the blood staining the thick, lush carpet. Adam moves so that he is blocking Allie's view, but he leaves his hand on Kris's knee, a solid, reassuring weight.

Allie hands Kris back his Acoustic, pulling it out her belt like it's an accessory that she is loaning him. "Do you think, I mean, I shot him. There’ll be repercussions."

"He was going to kill me. You, possibly," Adam starts as Kris says, “I could tell them that it was me. It's my gun." He doesn't think they'd do anything about the Princess Select shooting to save her own brother, but if there's the slightest risk, he's not letting her take it.

"Don't you start. We’re going to tell the truth. Hasn't there been enough self sacrifice for one day?" Allie says, exasperated and shaky.

Kris says, "Probably for a lifetime," before he can think it through and realises he's just agreed to let her...

So he makes a plan, as quickly as his brain will run, possibilities and people and resources rushing past his eyes like they're caught in a hurricane.

"There's still Adam’s trial tomorrow. And there's the three of us, and the crew, and everything we know. And probably a paper trail. Oh, and Daniel Gokey."

Allie makes a hmming noise as she tilts her head, the way she always does when she's plotting, the way that Adam does when he's unsure. "What are we doing with Daniel?"

“Using him,” Kris says, and watches Adam’s smile glitter sharp. “The Minister said he would support the people with power. Let’s make that us.”

Adam says, “If we can make all of this a coup d’état, we can’t be prosecuted for treason. If all of the people who we fired upon were working for Le Renard, and we can prove it, then it’s not a crime against the realm. We can get Daniel to play the reluctant usurper to the rightful Idol.” He doesn’t sound as happy as he should. “That is to say, me.”

Oh.

They have to cross that bridge now, into the future when Adam can’t go back to the command post that he loved and excelled at, and can’t stay on Kris’s ship. This is where he’ll have to stay. Kris has seen the way Adam looks when the Court is mentioned, at best closed off and at worst heartbreaking.

“ _Adam,_ ” he says. He doesn’t even know where to start, but Adam looks like he understands.

“This isn’t some sort of self sacrifice thing, Kris, I promise.” Adam pulls a rueful face. “I learnt my lesson there. This is me making a good choice. This is how we beat those bastards.”

Kris puts his hand over Adam’s, where it’s still resting on Kris’s knee. “I still...” Adam says, and bites his lip.

Allie elbows Kris sharply and points with her head over Adam’s shoulder to where Minister Cowell is examining the body. He looks over at them and just shakes his head.

&&&&&

Minister Cowell’s people are alarmingly efficient at dealing with a dead body. After a brief, very unfazed discussion about getting some men in to remove it, he and his coterie herd Adam and Allie away, Kris suspects to plot. Adam turns as he leaves, makes a ‘what can you do?’ face, and says, “Don’t worry. It’ll be fine, okay?” But it doesn’t seem like that, with Kris left sitting on the edge of the stupid bed, alone with only a confused looking courtier and a large bloodstain for company. He doesn’t even know where Adam has been taken. It feels like everything Kris has been trying to prevent.

He sends a message out to the Conway and then sits by the dock and waits for his ship to arrive.

The Conway flies in that afternoon. It’s a rare sight for Kris to watch her in the air, all the familiar lines forming a new shape from down here.

The gangway has hardly touched the ground when his crew are pouring down it. Matt gets to Kris first and gives him a hard hug. “We didn’t mean for you two to get into a shoot-out with the Minister, Kris. What the hell were you thinking?” he says when he pulls back.

Kris says, “It wasn’t really a shoot-out.” He hides his face behind Meg’s hair for a moment. “He had all the guns.” He hasn’t seen anything of Adam or Allie since they left that room, and he’s been told not to expect to. Not until tomorrow, until the _trial._

Everyone keeps telling Kris not to worry. He really doesn’t see why.

&&&&&

The trial is slow and terrible, like a very particular kind of torture. Adam sits, hands folded on his lap, and looks blankly straight ahead. He’s got his Upgrade back, thank god, but Kris can see that there are parts missing. And they wouldn’t even let Allie sit with the Conway crew. Instead she is all alone on the Royal Dais, surrounded by empty chairs that should hold her family.

And this is all just the setting. Kris has to sit through his crew giving evidence in the dock, and they may not be the ones on trial for their lives, but it’s still like watching his nightmares brought to life.

When they call, "Captain Kristopher Neil Allen of the Conway" to give evidence, Admiral Ross-Smythe holds up a hand, looking completely confused. He pulls the presiding Minister into a whispered conversation which ends with him saying, "Oh _yes_. The dashed stubborn boy with the blueprints."

It’s not the best of starts, and it doesn’t help at all with that lingering feeling that this is not where Kris belongs. A mere handful of these people have seen active service - he has no idea how they’re meant to understand what his ship has been through, never mind pass some sort of judgement on it. But you can only fight the war you’re in, so Kris sets his shoulders and answers the lawyer’s questions as best he can.

Lord Gokey ducks his head, contrite, when he steps up to start his testimony. This is it, the star turn, make or break and a hundred other cliches. “I was a pawn. _Really_ ,” he says, twisting his hands together. It could be an act, could be honest fear. Kris has no idea what Minister Murdoch said to Daniel to get him on board. He’s not sure that he wants to.

“I didn’t know such terrible things would be done in my name. I just did as I was told. As you can see from the letters, they were very insistent,” Daniel says. There is a small outbreak of nodding, and a few sympathetic murmurs, which get louder when he adds, “He’s my cousin, after all. How could I wish him harm?”

It’s a great performance. Kris knows, has heard it from the man’s own mouth, that he had his own reasons for wanting to be Idol - stupid and flawed though they were. Le Renard may have made the plan, but Daniel Gokey was all too willing to go along with it, to take Adam down, consequences be damned. But this is how the game is played here in Court, and Kris will take Daniel getting off a little too lightly if it means safety for Adam. “I never wanted to stand in the way of the Heir Apparent. If he wishes to take his place as Idol...” Daniel finishes, with a small bow in Adam’s direction. Which is his cue, apparently, to hand over the dock.

Adam looks like he was made for this, stepping effortlessly into his role as the centre of attention. He looks so _certain_ that finally Kris feels like he can breathe again. He’s seen Adam’s eyes go gunmetal grey with determination, he could never doubt that Adam would fight and focus and _win_.

“There are only a few issues left to address,” the lawyer says. Adam stares down at him until he adds. “Um, your highness.”

Kris bites back a laugh at that. Adam glances up, looks right at Kris like he heard him, and they grin at each other - a finger-snap, heart-beat moment of perfect synchronisation.

Adam says, “I am willing to answer any questions you may have.”

“Sire, we have heard testimony that directs contradicts your statement regarding the incident involving the destruction of the towers at the Gokey estate. Did you give a false account to the arresting lieutenant?”

“I did,” Adam says. His expression doesn’t waver.

“Why did you do this?” the lawyer asks.

Adam is standing ramrod straight, the posture Kris is used to seeing when he’s about the fire his Upgrade. Kris wonders if he’s thinking like a soldier now, too, working out how to defeat this enemy. “It was very clear that my presence on board the Conway was putting the lives of everyone on that ship in danger. They could have been tried and executed or shot down by pirates or towers or Fleet ships, and it would have been because of me. I realised that the only way to keep them safe was to turn myself over to the authorities.”

“And you did this willingly, even though you knew there was the possibility of a death sentence?” the minister asks, in a tone that suggests this is deeply unlikely.

“My sister was on that ship,” Adam says. “She’s...” He stops, voice cracking as he looks helplessly over at Allie. Allie shuts her eyes for a second, clearly trying not to cry, and shakes her head at Adam. Kris wishes she was sitting here with them.

Adam visibly hauls himself back together. Kris may not care for Adam’s flat, back against the wall, courtier’s smile, but it’s better than seeing him cracked open like that in front of all of these people.

The lawyer opens his mouth and then seems to reconsider. Kris leans forwards a little and yes, Adam has seen the weakness and presses his advantage. “Furthermore, the crew of the Conway are the very last people who should be made to face charges of treason. They are quite simply some of the best people we have defending the realm.” Heads turn in their direction. Kris focuses on a nice neutral bit of wall just to the left of Adam’s head. “Their flawless service record speaks for itself,” Adam continues. Kris wouldn’t exactly use the term ‘flawless’ himself, and next to him Katy seems to be having trouble reining in a giggle. “I only spent a short time on board, but I witnessed every member of this crew putting their life on the life for their country. It would have been unthinkable not to do the same for them.”

“I see,” the lawyer says. Kris tries not to look too triumphant. The lawyer shuffles through some papers. “You were aboard the Conway because?”

“The Conway was sent to fetch me from my command post after the death of my father. I am the Heir Apparent and it was my duty to return and take my place as Idol.” Adam says the title without the usual note of bitterness.

“This is the first time you have actually declared your intention to become the next Idol, am I correct?” the lawyer says. “In the past you have expressed a wish to remain in your post with the military forces in the borders. And your general dissatisfaction with the court and its system is well known and extremely well documented.”

Adam says, “I’m not sure what the views of my younger self have to do with the matter at hand.”

“If we are to call the actions of ‘Le Renard’ a coup d’état, we must establish that you were indeed always planning to return as the Heir and claim your throne. Considering your past actions and statements, that is not a given.”

Kris hadn’t thought of that, but Adam doesn’t look concerned. “It has become clear to me, especially over the last few weeks, that I cannot leave my country at risk to men like Minister Murdoch. I would be failing in my duties to my people if I allowed that to happen. And as for the system, well, someone told me once that the best way to get what you want is to make the rules work for you.” He grins over at Kris again. “And that’s exactly what I intend to do.”

&&&&&

Kris pushes his way through the crush of people filling the courtroom floor until he gets to where Adam and Allie are standing pressed together, nodding politely at well-wishers.

“Kristopher _Neil_ Allen?” Adam says when he spots him, raising an eyebrow. “You kept that to yourself.”

Kris grimaces. “Named for the Prince. I will be most surprised if you can think of a moment when that wouldn’t have been awkward to bring up.”

“Your highnesses, Captain Allen,” the Admiral says, coming up to them. “There is one more matter to clear up - the issue of the Princess’s involvement with the death of Minister Murdoch. If you would follow me?”

He ushers Kris, Adam and Allie into a small antechamber behind the man court room. There are already a number of men in there that Kris vaguely recognises - high ranking officials of the Court - seated around a long table.

Adam says, “I thought we’d already dealt with everything pertaining to the events of the last few days.” He sits down and Allie settles next to him, which leaves Kris the one remaining chair across from them.

“Ah, well, yes, but you see, her highness shot one of the most important figures in the realm. Inside the Mansion,” says the man at the head of the table. “It’s not the sort of thing that can just be swept under the rug, so to speak.”

“We have to make sure that the Princess understands the seriousness of her actions,” another man says.

Allie has been silent and pale throughout. Adam snaps, “Yes. I think she does. She killed someone. She didn’t want to but she did what she had to. Must we put her through anything further?”

The man looks over at Allie. Kris doesn’t understand how he can’t see what this is doing to her.

“No-one, even royalty, is above the law, your Highness,” he says.

Adam takes Allie’s hand. “If this was a war, Allison would not even have to explain herself. She shot to save a life. In the military we accept that as a necessary evil and then we _move on_.”

The minister shakes his head. “You military men, you see too much death and it loses any meaning to you. You may be able to treat it like some trivial matter, but we cannot.”

“Have any of you actually killed a man?” Kris asks. He looks around the table. “Well?”

“Captain Allen,” Admiral Ross-Smythe says, and actually tuts. “I’m not sure that...”

Kris doesn’t wait for him to finish. “I was 17 when I first shot someone. They were on a ship that was attacking mine, I took aim at a shape and after I fired the shape wasn’t there anymore. And I felt awful, because it didn’t seem like such a momentous act.” Adam is frowning at him, not angry but certainly confused. Kris continues, “About six months later I was serving on the Mission, and we were bogged down in the worst sort of campaign, a guerrilla war that was doing more harm to the local population than either side. I was on guard duty when a man tried to sneak into our supply tent.” He swallows, trying to get the taste of humid, smoke filled air out of his mouth. “We hardly had anything to eat as it was, and I had very strict orders about looters. So I shot him.”

The silence in the room is thick now. Kris hates this story, has only ever told it to Matt with the false courage of darkness and cheap whiskey to help him. But if this is what it takes to help Allie, so be it.

“He was pretty near to me, but I’d... At the last second I’d hesitated and my aim went. The bullet tore out most of his stomach, you could see his guts just spilling right out of him. He took a very long time to die. I should have done something about that, but I was too busy throwing up.”

He swallows again and stares down to the end of the table, right at the minister. “Military men kill because it is necessary, and we don’t sit around discussing the implications because we already know them. We know _exactly_ what each death means, and believe me, there is nothing trivial about it.”

The minister in charge looks around the table. “Are we all in favour of treating Minister Murdoch’s death as an act of self defence in combat?” Every single man nods.

“Very well then.” He turns back to Allie. “You will write up a statement, sign it and turn it in to the Admiralty. You may go now, if you wish.”

Allie practically jumps out of her chair and comes round the table to Kris. He stands up so that she can hug him properly.

“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Kris says. “We should go back to the Conway, tell everyone the good news.”

They all file out of the room, Allie with an arm still looped in Kris's. They're just out of the door when Kris is pulled back by a hand on his shoulder. He turns to see Adam.

“Can I talk to you for a moment?” Adam asks. His voice is unusually quiet.

Kris says, “Sure,” but Adam doesn’t carry on. He just stares at Allie pointedly until she says, “Sorry! Right, okay, _that_ kind of talk.” She flashes them both a grin and leaves.

Adam waits until they are completely alone in the corridor, and then he steps in nearer to Kris. “I just wanted to say thank you. You were amazing in there. Really. And I wanted to say...” he trails off.

Kris raises his eyebrows. "Are you lost for words? Because if so, I need some way to record this moment for posterity."

Adam is closer than close, hair falling over his eyes, and he's so handsome Kris wants to shake him to make sure he's actually here, directing his perfect smile at Kris of all people.

Adam says, "I’m trying to ask you... well. Everything I think of to say comes across as creepy or strange."

"Try me," Kris says. “I think I understand you, most of the time, even when you’re being strange.”

Adam fidgets with the button at his cuff. "So, do you want to kiss me in a room without my sister and a dead body in it?" Adam asks. He may be trying to be casual, but Kris can hear the truth in his voice. This is not a question about a kiss, they’ve already done that, this is a question about something much bigger, so he doesn’t make light when he says quickly, " _Yes_."

But Adam doesn’t follow through, just frowns and redoes his button, not looking at Kris. "I'm... My life is... I have to apologise for it, remember?"

Kris suddenly remembers that disgusted, dismissive look on Minister Murdoch's face.

"You are trouble, it's true," he says, and Adam's face shutters up, ready for the blow. "But you're worth it," Kris finishes, blurting the words out as fast as he can because _of course_ Adam would think that Kris was going to just throw this away. Like he’d tried to before. He thinks about it for a moment, and then tells Adam, “Clearly you are an idiot, and I was one too.”

Adam smiles like being called an idiot is the most romantic thing he's ever heard, and leans down.

Kris has always tried not to think about Adam and kissing, but he should have known Adam would be good at this. His mouth eases Kris's open, one hand sliding around his waist, the links of the Upgrade cold through the cotton of Kris's shirt. Adam moves smooth and effortless as always - as when he was shooting to save Kris's ship, laughing in the pale sunlight, leaning against door frames, dancing, drinking, dreaming. Kris makes a hungry noise and arches into Adam, making the kiss deeper, with tongue and an edge of teeth. He finally gets his fingers onto that taunting sliver of skin between collar and hair, hand possessive on the back of Adam's neck, all that abstract, unknown wanting transformed into the feel of Adam's chest, hands, _mouth_ , the taste of bitter coffee.

Adam trails his hand up Kris's side and then up over his chest until it's inches from Kris's face. Then he hesitates, just for a moment, and Kris feels the kiss change, like catching a new current in the air, edge into something somehow more intimate. He opens his eyes and leans into Adam's hand, remembering the uncertain dip of Adam's head.

"How could you possibly think I didn't want this?" he says.

Adam opens his - distractingly roughed up - mouth to protest. "You got unsure too," he says, accusingly.

Kris gapes at him. "Well _obviously_. I'm me and you are. Well. You're.." he tries an Adam special of a hand gesture, but it doesn’t come off. Adam just looks confused. "And I'm..." he pulls a face. "You know. Me."

Adam says, “Yes?” and Kris doesn’t know how to make him _see_. Kris tries only to focus on the familiar crook of Adam’s smile, but it’s a whole different context now. Adam on land, Kris at court. This is Adam after they’ve taken that step beyond friendship and stolen glances. This is someone Kris is _kissing_. It’s a ridiculous thought, but it tugs at the back of Kris’s mind. He feels raw with the newness of it all.

"I’m hardly the kind of man a Prince should have as his partner. I can’t dance to orchestras or even turn up to banquets on time. I don’t care for my dress uniform and I don’t know half of the Minister’s names. I know I’m good at some things, but I’m terrible at others. My hair is brownish and my eyes are brownish and I’m just... Ish-ish."

Adam stops the ramble by leaning forward and kissing him again, hand raking up into Kris's hair, and Kris loses his train of thought. Adam bites his bottom lip, just a light catch and pull, and says, "Ish-ish? What madness is this. Have you gone into shock again?"

"You say the sweetest things," Kris murmurs. He pushes Adam's face back with his nose until he can see him properly.

Adam's eyes are soft. Kris feels like he can see every thought in his head.

"You, Kristopher Allen, are the very best man I've ever known. You _are_. No ishs, ifs or buts. I was... I knew I wanted you from the moment you let me on board your ship and then warned me not to badmouth her. It was never about me not wanting you, I couldn’t stop if I tried. " It's probably the least polished speech Kris has ever heard Adam give. He wants to keep it safe somewhere, triple combination locked. "I don’t care about those things. About you not knowing names or wanting to go to stupid banquets and make small talk. You never gave a damn about my title or anyone else’s because you care about who people really are, and I _like_ that about you.”

“Good. Because I like who you really are.” Kris shakes his head at himself. “Which makes me say stupid things to you, clearly.”

Adam looks away for a second. “We like each other, then. But that’s not really the issue here. There’s still the problem that I'm going to be Idol and you deserve better."

"You might want to give that sentence some thought," Kris tells him.

Adam's hand tightens round Kris's hip, Upgrade encircling him like he doesn’t want to let Kris go, even as he says, "I'd be asking you to deal with - to put up with - a lot. Give up some..."

"Not the Conway," Kris breaks in. Adam might be all he can see right now, but the Conway is his whole life. Kris is sure Adam knows that.

“No, no,” Adam says in a horrified tone.

“Because I have a responsibility to my crew and I can’t ever give that up, or put them second. They’re...”

“They’re your people. That I understand.” Adam says. “We both have duties, but that’s not all we are.”

Kris thinks about Katy’s sad smile as she told him to stop thinking in absolutes, and the strange empty feeling of his - _their_ \- cabin. “I suppose I could learn to share, if you can,” he says.

“Of course I can,” Adam says, “I don’t mind sharing you with the Conway. You love her. _I_ love her.”

Kris says mournfully, "I knew you only wanted me for my airship" and Adam digs him in the ribs.

"I mean it, though, about me being Idol. People will find out that we're together. It's the Court. They'll say ugly things about you. If you wanted to be a Major, if you got any sort of promotion, they'd say it was favouritism even though you're clearly brilliant." Kris has never been called brilliant in such a matter of fact way before. It makes him want, well, all kinds of things actually, but for now he smiles up at Adam's proud, worried face and slides his hand to rest under Adam’s collar.

"Who wants to be a Major? I have almost everything I want already.” He holds Adam’s gaze so that he’ll know that Kris means this, light as he’s trying to be. “And I'll take what I can get, for the rest." He runs his thumb over the buckles at the top of Adam’s Upgrade, back where it belongs. Adam is the sum of so many parts, and Kris is stupidly fond of each one, and the whole that they make most of all. More than he ever expected.

Adam's face relaxes a little and he says, "I was sort of hoping you'd say that.” He strokes a finger down Kris's neck. “It just seemed kind of unlikely.”

“I think it’s because it’s a little bit terrifying,” Kris admits, and waits for the desperate feeling of vulnerability to hit him. It doesn’t.

“It is, isn’t it.” Adam huffs out a laugh. “I keep thinking about how I could get this wrong. I’ve done it before. And the future isn’t looking easy for either of us.”

“It isn’t,” Kris agrees. “I’ve never even let myself think about anything like this before, I’m not really sure what I’m doing.” Adam nods. Maybe this isn’t how things are supposed to go in great love stories, but this is how the two of them work, honest in their imperfections. Kris says, “But I think. I think it will be better, if we have each other.”

“So, we’re going to try this?" Adam asks, all soft hope.

Kris captures the smile as it reappears at the corner of Adam's mouth, kissing it wider and surer. He says, "Well. You must agree that at least trying is much better than leaving it to that other life with a following wind."

It had sounded so rational at the time, when all Kris had known was hopeless desire and that head rush whenever Adam said his name. When he hadn't known that it would be like this, like something that shouldn't be happening in a drab, featureless hallway somewhere near a law court. This deserves that diamond lit hall outside the Idol bedroom, shining and private and implausible as all hell.

"I would say that the sky looks pretty promising from here. But it's raining," Adam points out with a glance at the windows. He bites his lip. "And I hate to be trite and you would mock me, I'm sure. So. I'm selfish. Sod another life. I..." Adam looks a little bewildered, which is novel and wonderful.

"You want me in this one?" Kris suggests, letting his voice drop low and rough. He can want now, be a little selfish and take something for himself. Adam’s given him that. Now he can _reciprocate_.

Adam's eyes go dark, hungry, and he says, "Like you wouldn't believe" and then a goddamn voice says, "Your highness. Um."

Adam does some sort of horrible whole-body wince and straightens up.

"Yes."

The man at the end of the hall flinches like the word is something that Adam has thrown at him. "There are. They're asking for you in the Chambers. You have a great many duties today."

Adam snaps, "Yes," again, a little less vicious this time. "Tell them I will be there directly." He waves his hand dismissively and the man scurries away.

"Oh, I see. That's what you've been trying to achieve when you make that silly hand gesture," Kris says, tilting his head and trying to radiate an aura of You Are Worth This Trouble. "I did wonder."

Adam leans back down, one arm against the wall to take his weight, and rests his forehead on Kris's. "Perk of the job," he says, soft and a little ragged. Kris lets him stay there for a moment, wishing he could give Adam all the time he so clearly needs to redo his armour.

Then he says, "Don't you have somewhere to be?"

Adam looks gratifyingly torn as he stands. "I'll come to the Conway, later," he promises, pressing a kiss into the corner of Kris's mouth. And then he's striding away.

Kris doesn't even wait until Adam is out of sight before turning away to head home, back to his ship, where everything will be loud and familiar, and Katy will mock him for sneaking out to make time with boys like she used to when Kris was 15 and had a sort of regular dalliance behind the grain silo with Cale.

She doesn't though. She smiles at him over the top of the paperwork that she's doing.

"Allison was here earlier, said you and the Commander had sneaked off together," she says happily, and oh god, this is far worse than teasing. This is Katy after her already blooming romantic side has been nurtured by the sunbeam of inappropriate glee that is Allison. Kris knows the signs.

He sighs, but it's hard to be too frustrated today, when everyone he loves is safe and Adam is somewhere changing the Kingdom, probably yelling at people and giving them a look that suggests that they are all disappointing him on many levels.

Kris can’t keep himself from smiling, and Katy shakes her head at him. "Oh darling," she says. "You are _gone_."

Kris says, "Please don't be too unbearably smug about this," but he walks over and hugs her anyway. She leans up into him and tucks her head under his chin. “I can’t help it if I’m happy for you. And also right; let’s not forget how right I am. You can call it smug if you want, but I choose right and happy.”

Kris kisses the top of her head, because she sounds it, and he loves her for it.

“So?” Katy asks. “I take it this means that you’ve decided to stop being obtuse idiots.”

Kris sits on the edge of her desk. “Nothing’s set in stone but... We’re going to be together and, just, see where we go.”

Katy nods, serious, and Kris loves her for that too, for the fact that he doesn’t have to explain how something that sounds so simple is really something quite momentous. He doesn’t quite know what is it he has with Adam yet - a little too new and raw for all the usual labels - and yet he can feel its possibility. It’s like holding a match in your cupped hands and knowing that, if you can protect it, it could ignite a fire. He thinks maybe where they go will be _spectacular_.

“We’re going to have to get Matt a new motto,” he says.

Katy looks down at her desk. “Working on it,” she mutters. She hands Kris a stack of papers. “Come on, Allen, plenty to be getting along with while you wait for your man to come home.”

&&&&&

It’s late into the afternoon by the time Adam returns to the Conway. Kris and Katy are bickering over who should have been compiling the fuel receipts when he arrives, looking slightly worn down.

Kris says, “Tough day?” as casually as he can.

“Is it too early to say ‘I quit?’” Adam says with a sigh.

“Hell yes,” Katy says. “Your highness.” Adam waves away the formality and drags a chair up to the table. He slumps down in it and exhales noisily.

Kris swallows a couple of times because his throat has gone weirdly dry. Seeing Adam back here, posture loosening like he’s come home - it makes Kris feel all kinds of things.

Adam sighs. “ I don’t want to you think I’m not grateful. After everything you’ve done to get me here...”

On instinct, Kris reaches out across the table and takes Adam’s hand. “I know,” he says. “I’m sorry.” It doesn’t feel like much but then Adam laughs, and it’s ragged but real.

“There are just so many idiots. And extraordinarily creepy people. And people who are scared of me. Or a combination of the three.” Adam might be smiling now but it’s hardly there, as if he’s a statue whose expression has been eroded away.

Kris says, “Let’s go for a whirl about the harbour.” He glances at Katy, who nods. “Just get into the air for a while, it’ll do us all good.”

Katy eases herself out of her chair. She says, “I’m sure everyone will be glad to fly for pleasure, for a change. Why don’t you go up to the look-out? I’ll marshall the troops.”

Adam is staring down at their linked hands with a strange expression. Kris says, “I couldn’t lie to Katy even if I wanted to, so...”

“No, no,” Adam says. He pulls Kris up, tugging him towards the door. “It wasn’t that. We should try and be discreet, obviously, but I like that she knows. It’s...” Adam pauses with his hand on the door knob. He’s still holding onto Kris and looks down at him almost incredulously. “It’s real.”

“You’re so observant,” Kris tells him. Adam snorts and opens the door. They let go of each other’s hands as they step out into the hall, but Adam walks slowly, pressed up against Kris’s side, all the way up onto deck.

Adam waves at Scott, who is tying off a line. “I said some hellos on my way down. No-one seemed that surprised to see me back here,” he remarks as they reach the look-out.

Kris leans on the railing by the array, smiling to himself. “They know you still owe us a cog.” The engines roar into life beneath them, the sky and sea spread out before them for the taking.

He feels something drop into his pocket. Adam leans close. “Anything you want, Captain Allen,” he murmurs.

Kris laughs. “So this is what being with the Idol is going to be like, all grandiose promises?” They’re both still looking straight ahead, but Kris thinks that he can _feel_ Adam’s grin in the atmosphere, happiness charging the air around them.

“What does your heart desire?” Adam asks, far too sweet to be anything but a tease.

Kris hums to himself like he’s mulling it over. He says, “I want to fly round this harbour, get a lung full of clean air, and then I want to go back to our cabin and,” he pauses for careful effect and lowers his voice so that it’s covered by the engines, “break a few bunk rules.”

Adam splutters. Kris gives himself a mental pat on the back. He likes that he can unbalance Adam, too. “What can I say, I really feel like untying some knots,” Kris continues. Adam leans right in again his side, laughing helplessly.

“Hey,” Katy yells from behind them. “Do you want us to wait an hour so that the two of you can fly off into the setting sun?” Most of the crew are gathered around her, trying not to laugh and generally failing.

“You’re a menace, Katherine O’Connell,” he shouts back fondly. Kat salutes and raises her eyebrows at the same time, which is a combination only she could probably pull off. “But no, this is fine, perfect.”

“Perfect, hey?” Adam says softly, and when Kris turns to face him, Adam’s smile is like the horizon - beckoning and beautiful and full of possibility.

Kris doesn’t even try to hide behind fake flippancy, not with Adam. “Yes,” he says, quiet and unashamedly sincere. He calls down:

“Let her fly.”

**Author's Note:**

> [Added Extras Post](http://laliandra.livejournal.com/37669.html)


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